Mr. Bernard Gloster:

Yes. This is a measure that I spoke to shortly after I took up the post. I believe there is a fundamental inequity for people who are in care in that just because they live in a nursing home they do not necessarily have access to the same range of services as if they were living at home. The starting point for that was to try to capture the people going from acute hospitals to nursing homes, which for long-term care is about 55 people a week, and to use our now integrated care of older people teams to do a comprehensive geriatric assessment to inform their care in the nursing home and then, where appropriate, to follow them up and support them in the nursing home. They are now doing that in about 13 of the 30 teams. They are the specialist teams. That is part of my target for this year.

There are some matters I will need to deal with under the public service pay agreement. I will have to discuss them with the national joint council of health unions. I hope to do that in the next week. The intention is that it will become routine for primary care services that are available to people living in their own house to be equally available to people living in a nursing home, be it public or private. Not everybody shares my view on that, but I am very clear. That is my view and it is what I intend to pursue. We have done it to a very small degree, but it is nowhere near satisfactory yet.