NHS primary care reform not fast enough – report
CHANGES to primary care provision in the Welsh NHS have not delivered the improvements that had been hoped for so far, according to a report from the Wales Audit Office.
Primary care – which largely covers GPs but also includes services delivered in the community by pharmacies, dentists, opticians and other health and social care professionals – is playing an increasingly important role in the treatment of patients.
Primary care clusters have been created with the aim of co-ordinating such services better.
But the report says change is not taking place at a fast enough pace and that the new system is not working as well as it should.
The report says: “There remains growing pressure on the traditional model of primary care and patients are experiencing continued difficulties in accessing appointments at GP practices.
“The Primary Care Model for Wales promotes the development of multi-professional primary care teams, to reduce the current pressures on GPs and to improve access and services for patients.
“However, progress on implementing the model is patchy and the pace of change needs to be increased.
“The NHS in Wales aims to shift resources towards primary care. While there is evidence of some resource shifting in this way, change has not been at pace and scale.
“Faster progress is needed to improve the way that performance and activity is measured.
“The available data suggests mixed performance across Wales. But the data are limited and the current performance measures do not provide a clear picture of how well primary care services are performing and how much activity is happening within services.
“We found that much work remains to be done to ensure clusters have a clear remit, sufficiently broad membership and can drive change at pace and scale.”
Auditor General Adrian Crompton said: “Primary care services play a vital role in the system of health and care in Wales.
“While there has been a range of plans to develop primary care, progress in implementing these plans has been limited and primary care has not always had a high enough profile within the NHS in Wales.
“This has to change, and the new model that is envisaged for primary care needs to be rolled out at a quicker pace and on a larger scale, and with appropriate engagement of staff and service users.
“Failure to do so will create some real challenges to the sustainability of these vital services.”