MPs call for regular scrutiny of Better Care Fund after numerous concerns

MPs have called for yearly evaluations of the controversial Better Care Fund, which is designed to shift care from hospitals into the community by encouraging integrated health and social care, to ensure that its shortcomings are monitored.

MPs on the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee voiced many concerns about the fund in their Planning for the Better Care Fund report, published on 26 February.1

England’s Better Care Fund is intended to help older and disabled people to be cared for more in the community than in hospitals by creating a single, pooled budget to incentivise the NHS and local government to work more closely together.

The fund is now intended to pool £5.3bn (€7.2bn; $8.2bn) of existing NHS and local authority funding from April, but controversy has arisen about the level …