This editorial marks the transition of LJPC from print to web. Instead of receiving one print copy twice a year, readers will be notified of a few papers every month that will build up themes over time. You can go to the website to read them as full sets at a later date. We hope that this will make it easy for many people to consider ways in which insights from the papers can be developed further and practically applied.
We are delighted that LJPC has been accepted for PubMedCentral, which will enable all past and future papers to be uploaded onto this search engine.
The journal will continue to examine complex issues from multiple perspectives, aiming to inform effective health policy by publishing practical ways to improve health. We will continue to develop papers in the spirit of co-production – weaving together different insights to tell deeper, richer, longer-term insights than single papers can reveal.
LJPC so far: 2008–2012
LJPC has encouraged the evolution of ideas in healthcare policy from its very first edition in 2008. In that edition, Lord Darzi took the opportunity of a LJPC interview to explain that he intended the term ‘Polyclinic’ to mean integrated service provision and not buildings – which helped to generate the term ‘Polysystem’.
Also in 2008 LJPC made a link with contemporary ideas about integrated care and the 1979 international consensus at Alma Ata. At this conference all countries of the world agreed that effective healthcare systems need mechanisms to achieve broad collaboration for system-wide cohesion. This debate has informed LJPC editions ever since, including editions that focused on mental health, end of life care and child care.
By 2010 LJPC was publishing papers on ways to enable inter-organisational collaboration engagement in service improvement, reminding readers that too much emphasis on central control can fragment care. Papers by Checkland and Ferlie provided authoritative academic insights; Lord Howe (government minister) and Pam Chesters (Chief Advisor to the Mayor of London) gave interviews to discuss how to increase collaboration and reduce fragmentation.
More recently, in 2011 and 2012, LJPC has focused on how to practically support Clinical Commissioning Groups to collaborate in health improvement. Models of care from different countries have sat alongside techniques that model whole systems of care and evaluate them through routinely gathered data. Pioneers of community oriented primary care and the New Public Health re-presented their ideas for a modern context. Internationally respected authors – Steve Field, Nigel Crisp, Geoff Meads – contributed their views. All argued that healthcare education and organisational structure need to focus more on improving the capacity of the whole system to integrate different contributions to health improvement.
For the next web-based phase, LJPC will focus on Integrated Care. Or perhaps it is better to say ‘Integrating Care’, since integration involves the development of relationships across multiple organisational boundaries – a job that can never be completed. Healthcare requires ‘physical’ structures such as reliable information systems. But it also needs infrastructure that supports on-going relationship building between many different professionals, from which comes efficiency and innovation. This aspect needs to be especially highlighted, because it is usually forgotten in the rhetoric about how to transform healthcare.
Edition 5.1 (Autumn 2012)
In this edition we explore how to develop multiple-way relationships across multiple organisational boundaries for integrated care. This month (November) the following papers will be posted:
What kind of leadership does integrated care need? Deirdre Kelley-Patterson describes the kind of leadership that is needed for integrated care – and concludes that transformational leadership needs to be developed, to enable multiple-way communication and trusted relationships between different disciplines
The Integrated Care Pilot in North West London. Andrew Steeden describes an initiative in West London that helps clusters of practices to systematically develop relationships with other colleagues, for the care of patients who are elderly or have diabetes
Achieving University Linked Localities within Health Networks. LJPC editors describe an initiative in West London that integrates the Integrated Care Pilot with the work of universities to create ‘University Linked Localities’
London Landscape this month
John Horder – Obituary. It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the recent death of John who had kindly allowed LJPC to serialise his autobiography over the past four years. Here Hugh Barr pays tribute to one of the greatest GPs of all time (first published in the Journal of Interprofessional Care)
Recollections of general practice. Elizabeth Horder, John's wife and also GP partner, describes what it was like before and after the National Health Service started in 1948
Primary Care Ethics, a conversation between a London GP and Milanese GP. Andrew Papanikitas and Francesco Carelli reflect on everyday concerns for urban GPs in Italy and England. The authors welcome correspondence on the concerns themselves as well as on other things that we can learn from different settings.
Future papers in this edition of LJPC
In the next few months LJPC will post other papers in this edition:
Models of integrated care and leadership for change
Grassroots experience of the Integrated Care Pilot
How Health Networks can support shared care for long-term conditions
Communication for the care of patients with long-term conditions