Scale of NHS struggle would make creating a 25-point plan all too easy... but here are 5 that would make real difference now
LAST week Plaid Cymru launched a plan to help tackle the crisis in the NHS in Wales. The plan offers both immediate and longer-term solutions for the problems facing the health service.
It has been developed in conversation with the health sector and represents the five things we believe can make a real difference.
The plan was debated in the Senedd on Wednesday 25 January as part of a call for Welsh Government to bring forward a strategy to reduce the pressures facing the NHS, with measures including, but not limited to:
1. Pay: Providing a fair deal for NHS workers to create the foundation for a sustainable health and care service.
2. Workforce Retention: Making our NHS an attractive place to work.
3. Prevention: Significantly elevating the prominence and priority given to preventative health measures.
4. Health and Social Care Interaction: Taking a sustainable approach to ensure a seamless service.
5. Delivering the Recovery: Creating a resilient health and care service fit for the future.
When ambulance response times
and emergency department waiting times are at an all-time high, and workers are taking to the picket line over unfair pay and unsafe working
conditions it indicates a crisis in the NHS.
There is so much that needs to be done following two decades of
Labour mis-management and Tory cuts but our plan offers five things that we believe will make a real and positive difference to everyone across the health service.
The proposals get to the heart of the issue.
NHS workers are the bedrock of our health service but that foundation has been shaken by years of real terms pay cuts and lack of adequate workforce planning.
Paying them a fair wage has to be at the start of the process and that’s why it’s the first point in our plan. Without our health and care workers, we have no NHS.
Of course, the scale of the challenge means we could just as easily create a 25-point plan, but we’ve focused on five things that we believe can make a real difference.
As well as the immediate difference that fair pay and adequate workforce planning will bring, there are also things Welsh Government should be doing better for the long-term.
One example is preventative health care.
This should be a core and explicit aim of all government policy.
These aren’t our ideas, but the result of listening to the people on the front line and the organisations that represent them. Our plan addresses the real concerns they have with the way the health service is currently being managed and offers five deliverable steps that will make a tangible difference to all involved.