3. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: The Task and Finish Group on Critical Care — Report

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:10 pm on 2 July 2019.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:10, 2 July 2019

Thank you for the series of questions. In terms of the new resource, it is a central resource. It's not about reallocating budgets that already existed within health boards, but there is something about how health boards use the resources they already have available to them as well. This isn't simply saying that extra capacity will only be provided by additional money from the centre, but the £15 million is money from the centre, and Members will recall that the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine expressed concerns about critical care capacity last year, and I asked the chief executive of NHS Wales to meet them, and that's helped to inform some of the work that we have actually undertaken since then, and members of the faculty have, of course, been involved in the task and finish group. And that comes back to the point you later made about north Wales. The additional capacity we're talking about—seven extra beds—comes from work streams that they've endorsed as well. That's the additional capacity that the finance should release, but it is on the basis that there are proper plans about how they'll do that, how they'll scale that up and make sure that the capacity is there to deliver. But that, in itself, as I've said in response to Angela Burns, must come together with more efficient use of resources and, in particular, as I said in my statement, delayed transfers of care, an area where we could make better use of what we already have as well as the additional capacity that we're looking to create.

I think I dealt with the point about what will happen if people try to spend money in a different way. I've been clear that money can be clawed back in other areas. Health boards will be managed. In this area, it's a nationally directed programme, and I expect the money to be spent that way, and health boards won't be able to find a different way to spend money inappropriately. The set of recommendations are relatively tight and clear as to how money will be spent, so there aren't lots of opportunities for money to leak into other areas of the service.

On your point about what will happen with recruitment activity, well, we actually have a good record through ‘Train. Work. Live.’, and it's come on the back of working with service areas, working with representative groups within that service area, about what is currently attractive for the way in which we deliver our service and what would make that service more attractive. And, actually, having a view on the longer term future for the service is something that staff should find attractive. And, of course, this is informed by the recommendations from a group of clinicians working in this service area at present who recognise the pressures that exist but also how there could be a better service to deliver both for our patients but also, of course, for our staff—a better place for them to do their job. And we have success in terms of psychiatry, GP training places, pharmacy, nurses and therapists in the ‘Train. Work. Live.’ programme, so we have got some reasons to be optimistic about our ability to do more in this area as well.

I expect to have plans provided in the autumn, and I expect to see progress within the next 12 months or so. But some of this, as I see it, is about skilling up the staff we currently have as well as the additional staff we need to bring in to deliver the capacity that we want to deliver. So, I'm not going to pretend that this will be a quick fix. We do have clarity about how the money should be spent and the benefits that should be gained.