Cardiff event discusses ‘changing landscape’

This was the key message to emerge at the 2009 Welsh Health Estates conference in Cardiff, where a mood of pragmatic optimism characterised many of the presentations. Jonathan Baillie reports.

  The conference, held from 23-34 April at Cardiff’s Hilton Hotel, began with a brief scene-setting introduction by the director of Welsh Health Estates (WHE) Neil Davies, who began by highlighting the “extremely volatile” conditions to which the UK economy was currently subject. Indeed the day before Chancellor Alistair Darling had announced significant cuts in public spending in his 2009 Budget. The head of the WHE went on to briefly discuss the “huge re-structuring” currently ongoing in the Welsh NHS, the rationale behind which was subsequently explained in a presentation by Bob Hudson, director of strategic direction and planning at the Welsh Assembly Government’s (WAG) Department for Health and Social Services. Among the most significant changes, Bob Hudson explained, were the replacement of the 22 existing local health boards and seven NHS Trusts with seven new, integrated local health boards, together with the establishment of a new National Delivery Group and National Ministerial Advisory Board, charged with bringing stronger national leadership and external challenge through the appointment of non-executive directors. In discussing the rationale behind the restructuring, seen by many in Wales as the biggest set of reforms in the history of the country’s NHS, Bob Hudson explained that the previous highly fragmented structure, with “many too many different bodies, major overlaps between organisations, and insufficient capacity in some instances to cope with modern-day healthcare challenges”, was widely felt to be badly in need of overhaul and replacement with a more “fit-forpurpose, simpler, integrated system”.

Revised structure