Summer conference: prevention culture change needed

04 July 2019 Seamus Ward

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He told the conference that prevention was a clear priority for the government.Gregor Henderson - L

‘We have been building the case for prevention and mental health investment over the last few years. There’s very strong evidence that investment in mental health will save NHS resources. With early intervention and prevention we can support people so they are not going into the wider service unnecessarily.’

But he added: ‘We are trying to shift the mindset so that prevention is seen as an investment and not a way of saving costs overall. The finance profession is key in driving that to enable us and others to adopt this change.’

Reaction to work PHE has done with CIPFA, which backed a culture change in the evaluation of spending on prevention, has been positive. The public health body is now seeking further organisations to provide more proof of concept. He invited individual organisations and the HFMA to join this work. ‘This may allow us to encourage the Treasury, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England to look at ongoing financial incentives to drive prevention,’ he said.

However, Mr Henderson (pictured) warned: ‘This is a challenge to the system and where you invest collectively the return will not necessarily bounce back to everybody.’

This may seem unrealistic under the current structure, but he added: ‘This is where the integrated care system comes in’.

He argued that spending on prevention did not necessarily take many years to make a return. Such investment was cost-effective, but PHE had to show this was the case in practice.