6. 6. Statement: Winter Preparedness

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:46 pm on 15 November 2016.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 4:46, 15 November 2016

Sorry. Thank you for the comments and questions—said with the authority of a former head of health for Unison, of course. I think, actually, that the point you made early at the start about the English system—. Part of our challenge in Wales is to recognise the challenges that the more disjointed system in England has delivered for their staff and citizens, but also to make real the theoretical advantages and to see those made real in practice by having an integrated and planned system here in Wales—that’s really to be more and more progressive through each winter but also through elective and unscheduled activity in the rest of the year.

I’m pleased you mentioned Choose Well. It was fronted again this year by Andrew Goodall, the chief executive of NHS Wales. There’s something here about the citizen being engaged in their own healthcare choices and actually helping the system. In doing that, there’s a real benefit for the individual. It depend on which set of figures you listen to, but between 9 per cent and 30 per cent, depending on who you talk to, of people who turn up at an emergency department don’t need any form of healthcare intervention. Some people could be dealt with in a different healthcare setting. Again, you need to think about the authors of those different figures, but there is a significant number of people who turn up at emergency departments who don’t need to be there at all, either because they don’t need healthcare intervention or because they could get it somewhere else, either within the community, in a pharmacy or somewhere else. So, that’s a really important part of it.

The challenge is how we engage the public in making those choices, because if you turn up in an emergency department and you wait a period of time for a fairly simple intervention that you could get on a high street, that’s your own time you’ve taken up as well as, potentially, diverting decision makers and people giving care in that setting from people who have really serious needs and really are in an emergency or an accident department because of a serious accident or a genuine emergency. So, there’s something here about getting people to engage and actually make it easy for their own friends and loved ones who could be in that position of needing that extra care to access it more rapidly.

We will, of course, be looking to evaluate the Choose Well campaign. I’ve already asked, for the end of this winter period, to have a proper evaluation to understand the impact that it has already had to give us real lessons for the future. I think that’s important, too.

On the flu vaccine—I’m really pleased you mentioned this, because I’m delighted with the work that Rebecca Evans has been leading on on this year’s flu vaccination campaign. There’s a need to understand the balance between pharmacies and GPs in delivering the flu vaccine, but also, in particular, to think about people who work in social care or the health service to make sure that they actually take up the flu vaccine themselves. By definition, those people are working with vulnerable people, and the challenge is that if they don’t take up the flu vaccine, there’s a point there about the continuity of health and social care in being able to deliver and practise themselves anyway, but also the potential for some of those vulnerable people to make them more ill and raise the chance of them acquiring the flu in the first place.

So, I am looking forward to a positive outcome from this year’s campaign. We will learn from this year’s campaign, whatever the results are, to see further progress and improvement for the next year as well. But I do think there’s a real challenge here for the independent sector of social care in particular to make sure that they take up the opportunities around business continuity about how we deliver this in a real, embedded manner, potentially in commissioning, and the Minister may have more to say about that in committee this week.