The Welsh NHS is in need of a “revolution” to ensure services are fit for the future.
An expert panel, led by former chief medical officer of Wales Dr Ruth Hussey, said NHS and social care provision in Wales needed to be “seamless” and that change had to be “significantly accelerated”.
The Parliamentary Review said change should be guided by four goals. These are: Improving the health and wellbeing of the population; Improving the experience and quality of care for individuals and their families; Improving the wellbeing and engagement of the workforce; And increasing the value achieved from the resources that are invested in services.
New care models with services centred on the patient and their family and delivered as close to home as possible are recommended, as well as services being easy to access and preventative.
Technological and infrastructure investment is also a key recommendation.
The panel wants a new national transformation programme to deliver the changes but warned it would not be easy.
However the report also states that Wales does have the ability to change.
Dr Hussey said: “The scale of the challenge ahead should not be underestimated. It is clear that change is needed and even clearer that this should happen quickly.
“We have detected an appetite for change and a desire to ‘get on with it’. A strong commitment to transform not just how much is done, but what and how it is delivered is needed.
“We hope that this report will be a catalyst for the action that is needed, and help to guide the future of health and social care in Wales.”
Health secretary Vaughan Gething AM said: “This report, a key commitment in [Welsh Government strategies] Taking Wales Forward and Prosperity for All, sets out some clear recommendations about what needs to change and how to make those changes happen for the benefit of people in Wales.
“I’m pleased the report suggests that what we are already doing in Wales with regard to the integration of health social care services is right, but we will need to carefully consider the findings of this review to see how this can be improved in the future.
“The new long-term plan for health and social care will be published in the spring, taking account of recommendations in this report.”
He added: “I believe that what we have seen from the panel will set firm foundations for the future of health and social care in Wales for many years to come.”
I assume Dr. Ruth Hussey meant “seamless” rather than “seemless”, which does not mean anything. The aims are noble, with care “centred on the patient and their family and delivered as close to home
as possible are recommended, as well as services being easy to access
and preventative.”
The only thing is that the various usless health boards in Wales have been beavering away at doing the exact opposite. Healthcare of all kinds is not being centred on the patient but on what is convenient for the health board. Services are becoming more remote and more difficult to access. A revolution may be needed but I can’t see one coming.
Labour blame the conservatives for the lack of funding in the NHS, yet it’s the Labour Party who has been running the NHS here in Wales for 2 decades now and still no improvement.
That is correct, health has been devolved in Wales for some time and the level of care worsens year by year. Though this is true I don’t believe the malaise is confined to Wales but is also a feature of the English service.
The whole point of a National Health Service is to achieve economies of scale, to be able to respond to health crises wherever they arise and to achieve a uniform standard of service regardless of where you live. This can never be delivered when there are a host of regional health boards with their own managers, budgets and priorities.
I do not see any possibilty of perfection but I do think that the level of health and social care that we used to enjoy is feasible. There have been several massive management mistakes which include the deal done with GP surgeries by Labour to pay doctors more for delivering less, the closure of local hospitals in favour of city hospitals done by both Labour and Conservative governments. These policy errors, coupled with demanding that newly recruited nurses must aspire to a degree instead of serving an apprenticeship and concentrating on patient care, have crippled the NHS in one generation.
I have never worked in the NHS and have rarely used it. But, my thoughts are shaped by those who have and conversations with doctors and nurses who remember better times.
I think we need to stop health tourists that come here to take advantage of our health service. If thy do come here they need to pay for their services. Maybe an answer is to stop people without health insurance coming into our country in the first place, it happened sin our countries.
I also don’t understand how treatment can be given in one part of the country but not the other baffles me.
A major problem is that the NHS, although always saying lack of money is a problem, does not appear to collect from patients who come from countries with a reciprocal health agreement.
If a British person has treatment in another country the NHS actually funds the care. In 2016 Britain paid £670 Million to EU countries whilst only claiming back £50 Million, despite there being far more EU people in Britain than there are Britons abroad in EU countries. That the NHS does not claim back is one of the problems that needs to be fixed.
On your second point the main reason is the plethora of local boards and trusts. A better model would have been that of the old National Coal Board which although split into regions with their own management was centrally controlled and funded. This allowed economies of scale when buying and meant that a miner in Kent or Scotland wore the same clothes and used the same types of equipment as miners in Wales. If we had a genuine National Health Service many of the differences in treatment due to geograpical location would be eliminated.