Dear Patients,
We want to inform you about some important apparently “temporary changes” that Powys Health Board plans to implement starting September 1st, 2024. Unfortunately, as your GPs who provide community care, we were not consulted on these changes and were only made aware of them in the days leading up to the submission of the board paper on Wednesday 24th July 24.
We have several concerns about how these changes will affect our practice and your care, including:
- Who Decides Transfers: There’s no clarity on who will decide which patients need to be moved to different hospitals. Usually in order to move hospitals there requires discussion between doctors who are responsible for your care.
- Ambulance Services: The Welsh Ambulance Service Trust (WAST) was not, to our knowledge, consulted, and the changes might put additional strain on their services where patients are being moved, or their clinical needs change and they have to be treated elsewhere, requiring an ambulance to transport them.
- Palliative Care: We lack reassurances from the health board that these changes will not affect patients needing end-of-life care.
- Travel Impacts: Increased travel times for visiting relatives could be difficult for many families, there is no clarity on how this will be managed, potentially leaving patients in hospitals without any visitors.
- Nursing Staff: The changes might lead to a reduction in the skills of our nursing staff and the risk that they may leave to seek alternative employment elsewhere, further compounding the recruitment and retention crisis we face
- More Transfers to Larger Hospitals: Patients might need to be transferred more frequently to District General Hospitals, which will increase costs, mean patients are even further from their family and friends and are in a larger and busier setting than is required for the care that they were anticipated to have needed. Patients awaiting discharge arrangements such as a package of care, can often develop conditions during their hospital stay that require nurse and doctor input. So if they’ve been transferred to a unit where this has been scaled back, there is unlikely to be the option of repatriation to the community hospital for escalated care, as the bed would be been filled by a different patient requiring ‘enhanced rehabilitation’ as per their intentions: so they would likely need transferring back to a DGH.
- Care Closer to Home: These changes go against the goal of providing care closer to your home.
- Reduced Access to Minor Injury Units (MIUs): The operating hours of MIUs will be reduced.
We share these concerns with you and strongly encourage you to voice your opinions on this matter. Please visit the following link to share your thoughts and concerns https://pthb.nhs.wales/news/health-board-news/temporary/
https://www.haveyoursaypowys.wales/temporary
We would encourage anyone who has concerns as a patient to contact Llais via email: powysenquiries@llaiscymru.org they are collating the concerns of the patient population to feed back to the health board as part of the “engagement process” to ensure the voices of the patients are heard.
Thank you for your attention and support.
Yours sincerely,
GP Partners
Brecon Medical Group Practice