Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, affect approximately 25,000 individuals in Wales and has a significant impact of an individual’s quality of life.
Since 2017 the IBD team in Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has gradually introduced a suite of measures to improve the care for patients with IBD. The aim of these measures is to reduce the occurrence and severity of flares, to improve management to the condition in the community and prevent the need to hospital admission and invasive surgeries.
CEDAR is looking into how these change to the IBD service provision impacts patient outcomes. Specifically, we will be investigating the changes to emergency hospital admission, rates of surgery and the service-users perception of the IBD service. In addition to how cost effective the service changes are.
CEDAR will be analysing secondary data for health outcomes and obtaining information of service-users’ preferences through specifically designed English and Welsh language surveys and in-depth interviews.
The results of this evaluation will be summarised in a report due for publication by the end 2023.