The Health Board Directors of Primary and Community Care have refreshed the working description of clusters in September 2018:
“A cluster brings together all local services involved in health and care across a geographical area, typically serving a population between 25,000 and 100,000. Working as a cluster ensures care is better co-ordinated to promote the wellbeing of individuals and communities.”
Cluster map Updated 2021. First published in A healthier Wales, 2018.
Primary care services provide the first point of care, day or night, for more than 90% of people’s contact with the NHS in Wales. General practice is a core element of primary care but is not the only element – other services such as pharmacy, dentistry and optometry increasingly provide care directly to the public. The primary care contribution is also – importantly – about coordinating access for people to the wide range of services in the local community to help meet their health and wellbeing needs. These community services include a very wide range of staff, such as community and district nurses, midwives, health visitors, mental health teams, health promotion teams, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, podiatrists, phlebotomists, paramedics, social services, other local authority staff and all those people working and volunteering in the wealth of independent sector and voluntary organisations which support people in our communities.