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Health secretary John Reid today pledged to have 3,000 community matrons in place by March 2007, in a bid to improve the health and quality of life for people with long-term conditions, writes Clare Jerrom.

John Reid

These new types of health professionals will be responsible for providing one-to-one support to the most vulnerable patients with long-term conditions, such as diabetes and arthritis. They will monitor their patient’s health and co-ordinate the care and support they need.

“We expect the new long term conditions model to be fully incorporated into the way the NHS and social care deliver care to people with long-term conditions,” said Reid. “This will involve organisational change in some areas, but these changes will be vital to the health of many patients and will ultimately save lives.”

The new model is intended to keep people out of hospital and prevent premature deaths. There are currently 17.5 million people in the UK suffering from one or more long term conditions.

NHS and social care organisations will begin implementing the new model from now on and will:-

• assign community matrons to the most vulnerable patients with complex and multiple long-term conditions

• establish multi-professional teams that can identify people in the area with a single serious long-term condition, assess their needs and provide pro-active care before their condition deteriorates

• educate people with long-term conditions and encourage them to manage their own care more effectively

The Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors Association director, Mark Jones, welcomed the announcement as a “structured and robust approach to care management in primary care”.

However, Dr Hamish Meldrum, chair of the British Medical Association’s GPs committee said: “If the idea of community matrons is going to work, they have to be fully integrated into primary care, working with general practice, and not at cross-purposes.”

“The government is already investing additional resources via the new GP contract, funding family doctors to do precisely this work.

“If this initiative provides additional resources to do that, it will be a positive move, but if it is starting up a separate service there is a danger it will duplicate the efforts of everyone involved,” he warned.