07 November 2003
Welsh Health Minister Jane Hutt has been warned she must quickly find more funds to improve primary care, despite injecting £51m into the principality's NHS this week.
Speaking after a meeting of the Welsh Assembly health committee on November 5, Hutt announced a £25m package to fund changes aimed at accelerating patients' departure from hospital and preventing avoidable admissions.
She also provided a £10.7m capital funding injection to build additional orthopaedic capacity in Southeast Wales.
The initiatives followed a £16m cash boost for IT health care and public access to health information announced on October 30.
Most of these initiatives are the result of recommendations made by Derek Wanless in his wide-ranging and critical Review of health and social care in Wales, published in July.
As well as this new cash, the Welsh government has poured an extra 9% into its NHS over the past year. But senior NHS management figures said most of that cash was swallowed up by increases in staff pensions and the need to meet the financial demands of the European Working Time Directive.
Managers also said that although this week's cash was welcome, hundreds of millions of pounds would be needed to fund the more important changes to primary care in Wales that Wanless has called for.
Kevin Sullivan, policy officer at the Welsh NHS Confederation, told Public Finance: 'Wanless makes it clear that among the most important changes necessary are initiatives to improve prevention schemes and provide the information for patients that will allow them to improve their own health. These are primary care objectives.'
Dai Lloyd, Plaid Cymru's health spokesman, said a lack of policy clarity exposed the government's 'appallingly inadequate response' to the Wanless report. He claimed Hutt's cash had been poured into 'pointless restructuring and bureaucracy'.
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