Clinical Influencer, Cohort 3
Dr. Rob Letchford, Consultant Physiotherapist MSK Rehabilitation, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
Rob’s roles include Consultant Physiotherapist MSK Rehabilitation, Cardiff and Vale, National Clinical Lead MSK Health, NHS Wales Executive and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Cardiff University.
Rob graduated from University of Wales College of Medicine with BSc (hons) in 1998 and specialised in MSK with a PGDip in 2003 and PhD in 2015.
He has held a broad portfolio of clinical rehabilitation work across the whole pathway from primary, urgent and planned care, delivered both in community and hospital settings. He has a passion and enthusiasm for delivering person centred and value based healthcare, supported by several years on a senior project manager role with Value in Health in Aneurin Bevan and more recently as clinical lead for benefits realisation in Cardiff and Vale therapies. After a short spell as clinical lead in the policy space within Welsh Government, Rob has been working in the national space under the NHS Executive Clinical Networks planning to influence future healthcare in Wales.
In his clinical leadership role, his aspirations are to participate in the transformation of services to deliver high quality, evidence based and high value services to support people with MSK conditions (and comorbidities) to live well.
He is passionate about person centred and value based health and care and meeting the challenges of inequities in health and well-being through strategic approaches to data informed population health.
His professional interests include:
– Rehabilitation – preventative restorative, supportive, palliative
– Prevention Based Health and Care
– Person centred care
– Self management
– Patient activation and empowerment
– Value based health care
– PROMS and PREMS
– Quality improvement
– Musculoskeletal conditions
– Implementation Science & behavioural science
The Cardiff and vale rehabilitation model is about creating sustainable models for person centred rehabilitation within the place based primary care model for Wales. The model uses a prevention based approach. Exploring the balance between condition specific, and condition agnostic needs based methods of rehabilitation delivery. Meeting the increasingly complex needs of the growing population with multiple ad interacting comorbidities, whilst maintaining access to specialist services for those with complex single condition needs. It uses value based benefits realisation to inform quality improvement and influence system and clinician behaviour change. It uses co-productive approaches to understand and meet the needs of the local population in partnership with community providers.
It’s a great project with a large and collaborative team that is slowly and steadily adapting the system towards the future needs of the population.
