Vaughan Gething: Interestingly, I’ve had a range of conversations with people in the mid Wales collaborative, with Aberystwyth University and with Bronglais hospital, but also I attended last week the research and innovation day at Trinity college Carmarthen, which looked at a range of research and innovation activities right across the Hywel Dda health board area. There’s a very clear signal from this...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you. We are committed to high-quality general practice as a core part of a modern primary care service. Investment in general medical services will increase by £27 million in this financial year. This, together with £40 million for primary care estates and our £43 million primary care fund, supports the ongoing provision of sustainable and high-quality general practice.
Vaughan Gething: To be fair, this is the general practice committee of the BMA. I’m robustly confident that clinicians in secondary care would not wish to see a significant resource transfer between secondary and primary care. That is an honest part of our challenge: as we increase the money going into the health service—as I said earlier, at a painful and significant cost to other parts of public...
Vaughan Gething: I agree that we need to consider how we make best use of professionals within the service, and outside the service as well. It’s a significant part of a GP’s caseload, actually, those sort of moderate to lower level mental health challenges that bring people through their doors. And it’s part of the reason why lots of primary care clusters are investing in counselling services with the...
Vaughan Gething: Well, I don’t share the points that you make, and I think we could either have a conversation where we’ll continue to talk about how we deliver more medical education and training, and more healthcare professionals in every part of the country that needs them—north Wales, mid and west Wales and south Wales, too—or we could go through a rather formulaic, ‘You are responsible, it’s...
Vaughan Gething: Betsi Cadwaladr university health board is responsible, together with independent contractors where relevant, for the standard of GP surgeries in north Wales. We have provided significant investment in the primary care NHS estate in north Wales over the last few years.
Vaughan Gething: The wellbeing of the NHS Wales workforce is a key priority which is taken seriously by Welsh Government, NHS Wales employers and trade unions. It is a key feature of the Workforce and organisational development directors collaborative work programme with a number of projects underway including establishing wellbeing champions, psychological consultation and drop in sessions, sport events,...
Vaughan Gething: We continue to work with the health boards and other partners in mid and west Wales to take a range of actions to improve access to healthcare services that are safe and sustainable and as close to people’s homes as possible.
Vaughan Gething: I expect Health Boards to work with GPs to ensure patients receive the appointments they need in a timely manner. Through modernising our primary care services we want access to continue to improve.
Vaughan Gething: I am pleased to confirm all patients in Wales can access this treatment following the NICE recommendation in September 2016. Patients in north Wales can access this therapy at the north Wales cancer centre at Rhyl. Patients elsewhere in Wales can be referred for this treatment in Bristol. Swansea and Velindre cancer centres also have plans to provide this service.
Vaughan Gething: Sports days are integral in equipping children and young people with the physical skills they need to help develop healthy behaviours through their formative years. They also complement other year round activities like the daily mile.
Vaughan Gething: Welsh Government has invested £4.5 million in a Wales cancer research centre, which provides underpinning support for lung cancer research in Wales. There is an active mesothelioma research community in Wales, with seven studies on the Health and Care Research Wales clinical research portfolio, three of which are open to recruitment.
Vaughan Gething: NHS Employers in Wales continue to work to understand the full range of implications the new contract in England raises for junior doctors and the NHS in Wales. The BMA remains in negotiations with the Department of Health on certain aspects of the new contract and its associated assimilation arrangements.
Vaughan Gething: We are committed to delivering high–quality health and care services that are connected and centred on individual needs and outcomes. Our ‘More than just words’ strategic framework sets out our commitment and actions to support and strengthen the planning and delivery of Welsh language services in health and care.
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’m happy to formally move the motion before us today. To go back to where we were in June, I’m still pleased to have received the interim report of the parliamentary review of health and social care in Wales that we shared with Members, sorry, in July, not June, this year, but I tabled this debate today to allow more discussion now that Members have...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and also thank you to all Members who have contributed in today’s debate. I don’t think I’ll be able to cover all the points, but again, part of the point of having this debate today is for Members to put on the record a range of views as we go forward to the next stage of having the final report and then still having to make some choices. And I...
Vaughan Gething: Well, we don’t disagree about the fact that we want to train more people from Wales in Wales and keep them. We also still need to make sure that the international reality of recruiting healthcare staff is effective in who we get and why. There’s something here about how competitive we are with the rest of the world—the rest of the developed world—still competing for those same staff,...
Vaughan Gething: There are important, wide-ranging lessons to be learned from this case by the whole of the national health service here in Wales, including Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board. I’ve asked Healthcare Inspectorate Wales to undertake an independent review to provide further reassurance and ensure that lessons are learned. I set this out in my recent statement, and will keep...
Vaughan Gething: I take the view that the independent review remit is sufficiently broad for HIW to do their job. They are genuinely an independent inspectorate, and the challenge is to ensure that they provide a review that does provide reassurance in looking at what happened. There’s also a challenge for all of us in understanding, not just what happened at the time, but where we are now as well. And some...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the comments and questions. The health board review, the internal review, I know has regularly been referred to as being flawed. It’s not a whitewash. When you look at and read the report they recognise there were failings in the way they went about their business, both through the initial employment of Kris Wade and through dealing with the complaints that were made about his...
