Why integrated healthcare is harder than we think: How social cognitive processes hinder successful health and care service delivery

With ever increasing demands on the health and social care system, both politicians and technocrats have championed integration between the two sectors as a major element to meet this challenge. Even though verbal and explicit opposition to this policy is scarce, successful and sustainable integration efforts do not tend to be readily observable and wide-spread. The main objective of the goal-directed research in this article is to uncover to what extent social psychological processes play a role in this seeming “disconnect” between what people “say” and what they actually “do.” A total of 63 (n = 63) participants volunteered to partake in the study. The results indicate that healthcare participants indicate higher levels of social empathy, social perspective taking, and willingness to reach out and share resources as compared with those in social care during the explicit studies. Yet, the implicit data suggest a moderate to strong automatic bias which may well hinder integration efforts. We provide a way forward to increase the validity of these methods and provide recommendations for policy within health and social care integration in England. In addition, these recommendations have wider application to areas concerned with organisational change such as; mergers, acquisitions, and other collaborative working arrangements.