Sarb Basi, the managing director, said in response to the NHS Five Year Forward View that it would be a “natural, logical progression” to manage capitated budgets for health and social care budgets through an integrated care organisation, building a "coherent strategic partnership" with an acute hospital and working with community health trusts to incorporate nursing and therapy services.
[4] This appeared to connect with comments made by Simon Stevens to the House of Commons health select committee in October 2014 that he envisaged in Birmingham two large groupings of GPs - the Vitality Partnership and another which would employ geriatricians.
[8] It signed an agreement with Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust in November 2017 which was a “commitment to work collaboratively over the next three to five years with a view to forming a much more vertically integrated relationship”.
[9] Nick Harding, one of the co-founders, and chair of Sandwell and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group was reckoned by the Health Service Journal to be the 47th most influential person in the English NHS in 2015.
[17] After activity surged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in England the group found that its GPs had an average of nearly 50 patient contacts per day - around double what the British Medical Association says is the “safety limit".