title: Passing the baton.
abstract: This quote from a service user appears in the report of an evaluation of intermediate care services for older people, commissioned by the Department of Health and the Medical Research Council. According to Mary Godfrey, who led the research, it sums up what good intermediate care is all about. 'That comment really encapsulates it for me. There was a real consciousness [in the services studied] of the user at the centre of everything.'