The Welsh Conservative leader has called on Labour to “get a grip on the NHS and stop breaking all the wrong records” ahead of a debate on a Senedd Committee report scrutinising NHS waiting times in Wales where 1-in-5 people languish in pain.
The Health and Social Care Committee report Waiting well? The impact of the waiting times backlog on people in Wales, released in April, said that people who are on an NHS waiting list in Wales need urgent help and support.
The Committee is clear that although waiting times have been hit hard by the pandemic, the backlog was a serious problem before the effect of Covid-19 on the health service.
Its Chair, Russell George MS, said that: “Some people may deteriorate and need acute or emergency care. Against a backdrop of rising costs of living, people who are unable to work or whose outgoings have increased as a result of their condition may face increasing financial uncertainty.”
Members of the Committee have heard detailed accounts of the impact the backlog is having on individuals and their lives, including Jill Davies from Swansea. She eventually travelled abroad for a successful operation, where private treatment was cheaper but not before a long battle.
She experienced four years of misdiagnosis and poor communication from the local health board, leading to an extreme deterioration in her quality of life, poor mental health and ultimately left her feeling like she had no option but to travel abroad to seek private surgery.
Last week it was revealed that:
- There were over 707,000 on patient pathways – an increase of over 15,000 in two months;
- The number of people waiting over two years in Wales is now 68,032 – a 887% increase in a year – more than five times the England figure (12,735), which is shrinking fast;
- 1-in-4 Welsh patients wait over a year for treatment, only 1-in-20 do so in England;
- The median waiting time in Wales was 22.5 weeks compared to 12.6 in England;
- A third of patients had to wait over the four-hour target to be seen in A&E and 10,000 waited over 12 hours in Welsh hospitals, nearly double the number the same time last year;
- Only 54.5% of responses to immediately life-threatening calls arrived within eight minutes, down from 60.6% in May 2021; and
- A staggering 58.3% of amber call patients – which include strokes – took over an hour to reach, with only 22.4% arriving within 30 minutes.
Commenting, Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies MS said:
“The waits 1-in-5 people in Wales face for NHS treatment are unacceptably long. It should beggar belief that waits are getting worse here while improvements are going on elsewhere in the UK.
“Of course, we know the reasons for this – it is not the hard-working doctors and nurses who work long and difficult hours, but the Labour Government that has mismanaged the health service for a quarter of a century. This is clear from the long backlogs that doubled in the year before the pandemic struck.
“Labour need to get a grip on the NHS and stop breaking all the wrong records.”