MS, Cabinet Secretary for
Health and Social Care and MS, Minister for Children and
Social Care: On 11 November 2024, we launched the 50 Day Integrated Care
Winter Challenge to help speed up hospital discharge, help
more people be cared for in their local community and improve
collaboration between the NHS and local authorities.
The challenge provided health and social care partners with 50
days to review and evaluate their systems against 10 best
practice interventions and to make necessary improvements. While
some of these interventions will take longer to fully implement,
each part of Wales will have a clear understanding of their
performance and a shared action plan by the end of the challenge.
To support this work, we provided £19m to enhancing care plans
for the most vulnerable population to help them stay well at
home; increase the capacity of reablement and domiciliary care
services to support timely hospital discharges and avoid hospital
admission. The funding will also provide transitional step-down
care for people with complex needs.
This 50-day challenge has helped to focus efforts and solidify
working relationships across the health and social care system.
The initial results are encouraging.
November saw the third successive monthly reduction in delays. We
expect this to continue into December, establishing a downward
trend since April 2024 and highlighting the positive impact of
the 50-Day Winter Challenge.
The 50-day challenge was targeted towards supporting the people
who experience the longest discharge delays to leave hospitals.
An initial 395 people were identified – of these 225 (57%) people
had been discharged by the end of December and of those still in
hospital, 170 (80.5%) have agreed discharge plans in place to
return home or to a place of care.
Another important aspect of the 50-day challenge was to
accelerate the provision of community-based care for people
with complex needs or those living
with frailty, as a safe alternative to a hospital admission. A
small reduction – 5% in November and 6% in December – in
emergency admissions of people aged 70 and over was achieved
during the challenge period compared to 2023.
The 50-day challenge has shown some positive green shoots of
improvement in health and social care system flow. It has also
shone a light on where targeted work, focus and improvements are
needed the most, at a national level or regionally. We have been
clear in our NHS planning framework for 2025-26 that health
boards must continue to work with social care partners to deliver
the 10 actions in the 50-day challenge as standard. We will be
closely monitoring progress across Wales between now and the end
of March to see how these improvements can be further embedded
and sustained for the longer term.
