Wales launches health and care strategy ​

The strategy, A healthier Wales, will be backed by a £100m transformation fund. Under the plan, many services currently provided in hospital will be moved into the community, where there will be more joined-up services.

It is based on the Welsh prudent healthcare philosophy and the quadruple aim – improving population health and wellbeing; better quality services; high-value health and social care; and a motivated and sustainable workforce.

The strategy outlines 10 design principles to translate the quadruple aim and prudent healthcare into tools for delivering transformation. The principles include prevention, safety, independence and higher value.

Embedding value-based healthcare will mean achieving better outcomes and better patient experience at reduced cost, it said. Care and treatment will be designed to produce outcomes that matter to patients. And services will be delivered by the right person at the right time, with less variation and no harm.

Initially, work will focus on six clinical areas: safer medicines management; surgery and surgical pathways; frail elderly care; managing acute illness; equitable health and social care services; and end of life care.

‘Value in health and social care is also a way of giving greater focus to the outcomes that matter to individuals and considering their relation to the costs of achieving those outcomes,’ the report said. ‘This approach interprets efficiency and effectiveness by going beyond cost savings, safety and clinical quality.’

Wales health secretary Vaughan Gething said: ‘We have to move on from the idea that the hospital is the first or best place for you to be when you are unwell. That isn’t always the case, especially when there are a range of local services that will allow you to remain safely at home.

‘I recognise this will take time, but change will begin immediately. By the time we celebrate the 80th anniversary of our NHS I expect to see a stronger joined-up system that will be fit to serve people for generations to come.’