Comment on the pressures currently facing the Welsh NHS, and its reaction to them.
A Welsh Government spokesperson said:
“Our NHS continues to face unprecedented demand and is seeing thousands of people every day. In hospitals alone, more than 361,000 consultations were carried out in September. Over 99,000 patient pathways were closed in September, back to pre-pandemic levels and 6% more than August, and an all-time record 13,856 people were seen and told they don’t have cancer.
Progress continues to be made on the longest waits. The number of patient pathways waiting more than two years for treatment has fallen for the sixth month in a row and is down by 19 per cent since the peak in March. Waits over 36 weeks also went down in September, by 3% compared to August.
Primary care, ambulance and emergency department staff remain under intense pressure. As an example, October saw the highest number and proportion of ‘red’/ immediately life threatening calls on record. A further indication of the complexity of patient need is the number of patients admitted to the same or a different hospital following attendance at a major emergency department, which was 27.1% higher than September 2022.
Whilst we acknowledge ambulance performance is not where we expect it to be, we are driving improvements, including extending same-day emergency care services to open seven-days a week, managing calls better to reduce hospital admissions and recruiting more staff. Without all this the pressure on the system would be even greater.”