Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:57 pm on 17 October 2018.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:57, 17 October 2018

Yes, there are a number of managed practices across our system. As an overall percentage, it is still very small. However, I recognise there is a change in the structure of general practice that is taking place. We will see fewer small practices of single or double-handed practitioners in the future, because our ambitions for the delivery of general practice, as set out in 'A Healthier Wales' and as we were encouraged to do from the parliamentary review, are to be able to deliver services together in a more integrated way and to be able to deliver a wider range of services. We are likely to see larger practices that are fewer in number. We're likely to see more general practitioners employed by other general practitioners as partners, much as you do see now currently in the law where most solicitors are employed by other solicitors.

The challenge is: do we still have good value for money? Do we still provide high-quality patient care? And in every managed practice and in all of the surveys that come back, the public are still happy with the service they get, and so there isn't an impact on patient care that you can see. We would, though, expect to see a higher cost because they're having to employ locums at a point in time to make sure the service continues, and that is the price that we will pay to make sure that general practice survives whilst we change it deliberately to make sure we have a better structure to deliver better care with more services in the future.