The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh welcomes NHS Wales’ new Planned Care Recovery Plan, which our policy team has been contributing to via the Welsh Covid-19 Evidence Centre.
RCSEd President Professor Michael Griffin OBE commented:
The scale of the Covid-19 recovery is significant, and the answer cannot be to simply try and make exhausted staff work harder. We are pleased therefore to see the approach Wales has taken, looking to make systemic changes to deal with the backlog.
One area which we are particularly pleased to see is the proposed separation of acute and elective surgery. This is something we have been calling for.
We are also pleased with the focus on prehabilitation. Encouraging and supporting patients to make beneficial changes before surgery can not only help them to have a more successful surgery, it can also improve their quality of life before their operation takes place. With people being forced to wait longer than before, this is very important.