Placing greater emphasis on chronic disease management and providing patients with improved access t...
Placing greater emphasis on chronic disease management and providing patients with improved access to healthcare would help to reduce the impact of long-term ill health on industry, according to Andrew Lansley MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Health.
Speaking at the Royal Society of Medicine's conference - What about the workers? - Lansley called for more co-operation between employers, the Government and the NHS to offer options for treatment and rehabilitation services.
"Multi-disciplinary teams are needed to intervene at an early stage. This would mean facilitating an employee's return to work while providing a structure of incentives to do so," he said.
Lansley added that GPs need to change the way they handle patients with work-related illnesses and stressed a revamp of the current system was urgently needed. "Often, GPs see work as the problem rather than the solution, and it needs to be the solution," he said.
