Health Secretary Vaughan Gething has outlined how a new £100m fund will ‘transform the way health and social services are delivered in Wales’.
The £100m Fund, announced as part of the budget, will help to deliver the recommendations of the Parliamentary Review of Health and Social Care, published last month.
The review, chaired by Dr Ruth Hussey, makes a number of recommendations on how to meet the challenges facing health and social care services in the years ahead. It recommends bold new models of care with services organised around the individual and their family, as close to home as possible.
Speaking at the NHS Confederation on Wednesday, 7 February, Mr Gething told the audience of health professionals that he expects to see new, bold and innovative ways of delivering services to secure a sustainable future for the NHS in Wales:
“This additional funding takes our investment in the NHS beyond what the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation said was needed to maintain core health services. It will not be used to offset pressures in the system that should be managed through increases in efficiency from the additional funding already allocated.
“The Transformation Fund will be heavily targeted at driving forward those changes to health and social care services that the Parliamentary Review said were needed. The focus will be on using the funding for a small number of programmes that can have the greatest impact in developing and delivering new models of transformed services.
“It will be used to improve population health, drive forward integration of health and care services, focus on building primary care services, provide care closer to home, and provide some support to transforming hospital-based care.”