The number of people languishing in pain on an NHS waiting list in Wales has continued to grow, nearing 1-in-4 of the population, with little sign of improvement for A&E and ambulance waits.
Latest Welsh NHS data for April showed the highest ever number of patients waiting for treatment with over 707,000 on patient pathways – an increase of over 15,000 in two months – leaving over a fifth of the Welsh people on the waiting list.
The number of people waiting over two years is now 68,000, a 887% increase since in a year. The median waiting time for that same month in Wales was 22.5 weeks compared to 12.6 in England, while 1-in-4 Welsh patients wait over a year for treatment, only 1-in-20 do so in England.
Additional figures showed a third (33.4%) of patients had to wait over the four hour target to be seen in A&E last month – the third worst figure for the Labour-run Welsh NHS on record.
In England, the equivalent figure was 27%. The Welsh target to get 95% admittances seen in four hours has never been met in its 13-year existence.
Statistics also revealed that:
- The Central Valley’s Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board was the worst performing area in the nation against the four-hour A&E target, seeing only 59.9% in four hours;
- An astonishing 58.2% and 25.4% of Ysbyty Glan Clwyd’s emergency patients had to wait over four and 12 hours, respectively, making it the worst performing site in Wales; and
- Over 10,000 patients waited over 12 hours in Welsh hospitals, nearly double the number the same time last year.
When it came to ambulance performance in May, only 54.5% of responses to immediately life-threatening calls arrived within eight minutes, down from 60.6% in May 2021. The target of 65% of red-calls reaching their patient within eight minutes has not been reached in over 18 months.
Staggeringly, 58.3% of amber call patients – which include strokes – took over an hour to reach, with only 22.4% arriving within 30 minutes.
The slowest ambulances were in Powys with only 53.6% arriving within the eight-minute target of a red-call and only 36.3% coming to the scene within an hour of an amber call in Cwm Taf Morgannwg.
The figures come as Welsh Conservative digging found 3,351 people that rang an ambulance and were designated amber in April had to wait over four hours for it to arrive. 344 people waited over 12 hours and 14 waited over a day for an amber call to be reached, half of them in North Wales.
It was revealed that March saw Wales experience its worst-ever A&E waits, longest NHS waiting list, and second slowest ambulance responses.
Commenting, Welsh Conservative and Shadow Health Minister Russell George MS said:
"I find it astonishing that the NHS waiting list in Wales is continuing to grow when the Labour Government keep insisting that things are getting better when they are demonstrably not.
“I really do feel for anyone who finds themselves languishing in pain on this directory of the damned. Their day-to-day lives could be severely hamstrung as well as their ability to earn during a cost-of-living crisis.
“We’ve been clear in our solutions to this emergency and while some, like our regional surgical hubs, will be coming into effect in future, it is several months since we first proposed them. As always, the solutions come far too late for patients, who instead see Labour ministers focusing on creating more politicians in Cardiff Bay.
“Labour need to stop breaking all the wrong records and bring an end to these shameful numbers where 1-in-5 people are on a waiting list, 1-in-4 of them for over a year, and nearly 70,000 for two years.”