Joint Working Between Social And Health Services In The Care Of Older People In The Community: A Cost Study

There have been few economic evaluations of joint working between social and health care. This paper focuses on collaboration between professionals providing care for people aged 75 and over, and examines the economic costs of contacts made by social workers with community nurses, GPs and older people or their carers. Two areas were studied, one where social care and primary care services were co-located, and the other with social work teams located separately from local health services. The two forms of social care location had an impact on contacts and costs but overall it was fairly small. Contact costs made up only a small amount of the overall costs of care These findings suggest that altering the organisational arrangements for care delivery may improve the process of care delivery, but result in only minor changes to the proportion of overall resources directed to older service users.