Fresh moves are under way to improve health care collaboration along the Shropshire and Mid Wales border and tackle the confusion over who provides services.

The Cross Border Healthcare Protocol has been signed by the Department for Health and Social Services in Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government and Department of Health in England.

It agrees the procedures for people who are registered with GPs on one side of the border, while living on the other, and will run until 2011.

The action follows a meeting in Newtown of the Strategic Forum for Central Wales and the West Midlands attended by more than 150 delegates from private and public sector agencies.

It is hoped at least 56,000 people might benefit from the protocol, which covers about 60 of the most remote rural parishes and community council areas along the border in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Powys.

Devolution has meant two governments are responsible for policies but the protocol aims to ensure inconsis- tencies have no more than a minor impact on people’s everyday lives.

For example, in the health and social care field, some patients in a single village may have a GP based in England and some in Wales, and this might influence which other services they receive.

Sara Roberts, rural policy officer for the West Midlands Regional Assembly, said the protocol sets out agreed procedures for commissioning NHS health care, for residents in England registered with a GP in Wales and for residents of Wales who are registered in England.

“It formalises any ad hoc arrangements that may have grown up over time, provides transparency and avoids confusion,” she said.

She said more work was now being done to develop and strengthen the “pathways” of care, to ensure that secondary services, like physiotherapy and home helps, followed designated routes giving patients “seamless care” either side of the border.

By Dave Morris