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IWA Calls for Delay in Abolition of 5 Welsh Health Authorities
Added: (Tue Oct 30 2001)
PRESS RELEASE
Embargo: 1.00am Monday 22 October
A REORGANISATION
TOO FAR:
IWA CALLS FOR DELAY IN ABOLITION OF 5 WELSH HEALTH AUTHORITIES
The Assembly’s proposed abolition of the five Welsh Health Authorities by 2003 will increase costs, reduce democratic transparency, and should be delayed. This is the main recommendation in an IWA submission to the Assembly Administration’s consultation document Structural Change in the NHS in Wales. It says:
"The Health Minister’s plans to abolish the five Welsh Health Authorities in 2003 and replace them with 22 Local Health Boards will result in a major disruption to healthcare. They come at a time when, above all else, NHS Wales needs a period of stability to deal with increasing patient demands. Moreover, they threaten severe problems for the Coalition Administration in the year preceding the next Assembly election in May 2003."
Over the previous ten years there have already been no less than five organisational upheavals which have created a good deal of destabilisation within NHS Wales. At the same time NHS Wales faces constant rises in waiting lists for treatment and staff shortages which the proposed reorganisation does not address. The submission says the Administration’s reorganisation proposals fail to contribute to reducing waiting lists or enhance the recruitment of much needed staff – the most pressing NHS concerns. Instead they will result in:
* A rise in the number of organisations running NHS Wales from 20 to 37.
* A corresponding increase in costs. The Minister insists that the changes will be cost neutral but has failed to produce any details. All experience with reorganisations of this kind tells us that costs inevitably rise and often escalate.
* A strengthening of the Administration’s NHS Directorate by the appointment of three more Directors, inevitably consolidating more power at the centre and reducing transparency.
Instead of abolishing all five Health Authorities in 2003 the IWA suggests the Administration should establish one strategic Health Authority for the whole of Wales. This would maintain the existing five (health authority) divisions and their staffs (so ensuring minimum disruption) and leave the 22 Local Health Groups alone until 2005, planning in the meantime for a smooth transition towards their having greater powers. "Reducing the speed of change, should be regarded as the only realistic option," says the submission. This, it argues would allow more attention to be paid to the really pressing issues:
(i) Reduction in waiting times for diagnosis and treatment.
(ii) The imminent acute shortage of GPs in primary care throughout Wales.
(iii) Improving secondary care along multi-disciplinary lines.
For further information contact:
Gareth Jones, Chair IWA Research Panel – 01874 730650.