Powys Teaching Health Board (Wales)
Powys teaching Health Board (PtHB) covers a quarter of the landmass of Wales, but has less than 5% of the population, making it Wales’ most sparsely populated area.
Powys appears to be one of the healthiest places to live in Wales. However, issues affecting the health of the population are not always recognised and the Health Board works in partnership with the Institute of Rural Health in the provision of continuing professional education and training as well as research and evaluation in order to ensure that care delivery is designed and evaluated to meet the needs of the local population. This collaboration ensures that ways to overcome the issues of rurality as far as education and training and service developments and improvements and new ways of working are evaluated and embedded effectively into practice.
Challenges to health in Powys include having an ageing population, high rurality, hidden deprivation and difficulties in accessing services including those related to transport. Powys
has an estimated resident population of 132,000. There is a greater percentage of people aged over 50, and a substantially smaller proportion of working age adults in Powys compared with Wales as a whole.
The Health Board has invested in a network of video conferencing facilities which are centrally managed by the Welsh Health Video Conferencing Service. Powys is also the Welsh Government’s first county to have high-speed broadband implemented as part of the Digital Wales program and Digital Powys has undertaken a number of proof-of-concepts to demonstrate the additional value that can be gained from using ICT as part of a wide range of public and private service delivery.
The key aim of Powys teaching Health Board is to deliver “truly integrated care, centred around the individual”. What this means in practice is that:
• They will know their population and anticipate their needs;
• For the frail and the vulnerable, they will be able to assure them that services will respond and be available when they need them;
• When people access services, including those outside Powys, the care pathways will be seamless in terms of their overall experience, information flows and health records.
Wales adopted the Beating the Blues program. The programme was developed and evaluated by Ultrasis in collaboration with a research team from the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London, lead by Dr Judy Proudfoot.
Beating the Blues uses interactive modules, animations and voice-overs to motivate and engage the user through 8 sessions.
See the general description here, for more information about the cCBT services in MasterMind.
In Wales the distances between Health Board sites creates difficulties in reaching the patients. The VC solution will offer the patient a solution, where the patient will sit with a healthcare professional from the Crisis Team at their local Health Board site, and then have a video consultation with the consultant psychiatrist based at another Health Board site. This solution will reduce waiting time for the patient and reduce the time and cost of the healthcare professional travelling.
See the general description here, for more information about the ccVC services in MasterMind.
Powys team members:
|Role in project:Overall: Project Executive
Specific role in WPs:
|Name: Harold Proctor
Organisation: Powys teaching Health Board
Title: Dementia Lead
|Expertise relevant to project:
Harold is a Registered Mental Health Nurse who has a community psychiatric nursing qualification. Harold has 36 years’ experience in the NHS including clinical and managerial posts.Experience of implementing large scale change management processes and service reconfiguration.Clinical experience in the delivery of CBT.
MA in Professional Development.
|Role in project
Specific role in WPs:
|Name: Dr Mirza Wasi Mohamad
Organisation: Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board/Powys Teaching Board
Title: Consultant Psychiatrist
|Expertise relevant to projectDr Mohamad is a General Adult Psychiatrist with vast experience of delivering secondary care services. He has been the lead in-patient consultant from 2006 to 2012 and currently the lead for Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Services in North Powys. After completing the membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, he gained further post graduate qualifications in CBT. He has been a consultant in North Powys for 8 years and uses CBT and psychological methods alongside his biological treatments in treating clients with mental health problems. Dr Mohamad uses evidenced based methods in his approach and very keen to monitor outcomes in treatments of depression and other conditions.|