Guernsey Press

HSSD considers raising cash via ethical investors

PRIVATE funding could be used by Health and Social Services to bring world-leading care developments to the island.

Published

It is one of the major pieces of work the department is investigating for its future vision, which also includes looking at commissioning more services from the third sector – for example care homes and charities.

HSSD chief officer Dr Carol Tozer said that sometimes Guernsey's scale was a problem, but it was also an opportunity.

'There could be a vision for health care in Guernsey that would be an international exemplar of best practice around telehealth. We are small enough to do it. We need to look at other funding vehicles that will allow us to invest in that. The States has a finite pot, so how can we work with other investors out there?'

Telehealth makes use of technology so that a patient does not always have to go to a clinic for care. It is typically aimed at people with long-term conditions such as diabetes so that they can test themselves and the results are fed to an expert somewhere else to be assessed, cutting down on the number of appointments that return nothing new.

One funding option being explored is the use of social impact bonds – a concept that had been used in the UK for four or five years.

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