James Evans MS questions First Minister on Welsh NHS waiting times

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James Evans has asked the First Minister whether Welsh NHS patients could be referred to alternative locations around Wales or England in order to ease waiting lists.   Video from Senedd.tv

Transcript

00:00What is the First Minister doing to improve access to healthcare in Brecon and Radnorshire?

00:05Health boards are responsible for the planning and delivery of safe, high-quality healthcare

00:09services on behalf of their local populations within the resources available.

00:14Powys Teaching Health Board has set out its position, and I expect any service change

00:19to be informed by continuous stakeholder engagement.

00:23Thank you, First Minister.

00:24With the number of people waiting for appointments across Wales, especially for operations, they

00:28have a system in England where, if you've been waiting for a certain amount of time,

00:33they will offer you to go to other health boards across England to actually get that

00:37treatment done, especially in orthopaedics.

00:39In Hereford, for example, there's long waiting times for orthopaedic treatment, but they

00:43are sending patients to other hospitals across England to get waiting lists down and get

00:47people seen.

00:49After doing some research, the Welsh NHS doesn't offer this service to patients, so is this

00:54something that the Welsh NHS would look to do, to give patients who are waiting on those

00:58lists the opportunity to go to somewhere else in the system where there is capacity to get

01:03seen?

01:04Because I don't want to see patients in Wales, and especially in my constituency of Brecon

01:07and Radnorshire, subjected to a postcode lottery where they cannot get seen, where there may

01:11be spare capacity in the system elsewhere to get the treatment that they need.

01:15Yvonne Hamilton AMO Well, it's a shame that the research that

01:19you did didn't actually look at the latest statistics in terms of what already happens

01:24in relation to cross-border support and care.

01:27It's very interesting, particularly in relation to GPs on the border.

01:32There are 13,000 people in residence from Wales registered in England, but there are

01:4221,000 English residents registered in Wales.

01:45When you look at the number of people who are going into hospitals already in England,

01:501,700 just last year were involved in admission to an NHS English hospital.

01:56So, it is already happening, and we will continue to see if and when there is capacity, but

02:02at the moment we are focusing on making sure that we use the capacity that's available

02:07within our system and making sure that we expand the opportunities for that to happen

02:13with longer hours being used, for example, in Wales, rather than going across the border.

02:19Make sure we maximise and see an efficient system in Wales first.

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