If I told you that 1 in 5 people are on a waiting list in Wales, would you believe me? That’s the reality and severity of the crisis our NHS faces here in Wales. 620,300 people on an NHS waiting list out of a population of 3.3million.
And yet NHS funding accounts for over half of Welsh Government’s roughly £20bn-budget. It just hasn’t been used strategically and our NHS is still struggling – this is clearly unsustainable.
For 25 years, Labour have been in charge of the NHS. Every single Welsh Health Minister has been Labour – and the previous three Health Ministers were even promoted to First Ministers of Wales. They’ve essentially been rewarded for poor performance.
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Wales deserves better – and that’s what Plaid Cymru offers. This week, I launched Plaid Cymru’s plan to tackle NHS waiting lists so that we can then start the work on getting the NHS back on track.
NHS Reform
We know the NHS needs reforming. It faces several fundamental issues which must be addressed if we are to make it fit for the future. Plaid Cymru is clear about that.
We’ve already set out our plan to change how the NHS is run to make it more efficient. We’ve also got other plans in the pipeline to improve cancer services in Wales and digitise the NHS, and we’ve committed to better integrate health and social care and recruit 500 more GPs.
However, our plan to tackle NHS waiting lists is about taking urgent action now to reduce the treatment backlog, so that we can turn to those more long-term programmes of work.
NHS waiting Lists
We are serious about offering realistic solutions to tackle this crisis.
When seeking to create our plan to get to grips with waiting lists alongside health experts, we wanted to outline what a Plaid Cymru government would do on day one – within the same funding envelope an staffing constraints.
These solutions aren’t exactly new, they’ve been identified as best practice happening across Wales and really are quite simple. So while the Labour Welsh Government have failed to roll these out, we’ve listened to health professionals and have incorporated them into a plan that we know will have a considerable impact to bring down waiting lists.
Plaid Cymru’s plan
1. We’d establish temporary treatment centres to get people on waiting lists treated faster.
We know that Emergency Care often takes resources away from planned treatments, causing long waits.
Plaid Cymru would set up temporary treatment centres, or surgical hubs, in existing hospitals across every single health board, each focused on a specific type of care.
By reorganising staff and using underused hospital spaces, we could reduce waiting lists by up to 30%.
2. We’d speed up referrals by creating an Executive Triage Service.
The referral process in Wales’ NHS is slow and inefficient, partly due to a shortage of GPs. Plaid Cymru plans to address this by creating a special team to speed up referrals and quickly match patients with the right doctors.
This would remove unnecessary cases from waiting lists, and support doctors with weekend approvals to free up space. It could clear up as much as 60% of backlogs in some areas, like dermatology
3. We’d make health boards work together through introducing emergency legislation to embed systematic collaboration.
We’ll make sure hospitals share resources and work as a team so patients can be treated faster, no matter where they live.
It’s clear that Wales’ health boards aren’t working together as well as they should, leading to poor coordination and wasted resources. Plaid Cymru would introduce emergency laws to make health boards work together better and share resources more effectively.
That means, if one health board area has extra capacity for specialist appointments, then patients waiting in neighbouring health boards should be able to access those too.
4. We’ll improve waiting list workforce planning.
Currently, lengthy waiting lists are not matched with the staffing levels required to fulfil its demands.
Plaid Cymru plans to improve how waiting lists are managed by setting staffing levels before treatments are planned, based on successful models like those in the Aneurin Bevan Health Board.
We’ll create national guidelines for managing waiting lists and use a team-based approach for patient assessments, such as whole-body check-ups by GPs to spot conditions early.
5 And finally, we’ll use technology – or telemedicine – to help patients.
Telemedicine would not only monitor patients who might not need to be on a waiting list, but would also close that gap between GPs and Consultants to get your symptoms assessed sooner.
Many people stuck on a waiting list may not actually need surgery, but simply need better support to manage their conditions. We’ll use digital tools to help patients track and manage their care, and allow doctors to monitor them remotely.
The Executive Triage Service will help sort through waiting lists and make sure resources are used efficiently, providing faster care and reducing unnecessary delays. This will create a support layer between GPs and specialists, filling a gap in current care.
Plaid Cymru is serious about fixing the NHS.
I won’t pretend that waiting lists would be eliminated overnight. But these actions could all be taken in the short term, without costing a fortune, and make a huge difference in bringing down waiting lists so that we can finally start on that long-term work of addressing the fundamental issues facing the NHS.
After 25 years of Labour, Wales – and crucially the NHS – needs a fresh start.
Only Plaid Cymru has the plans and the ambition to deliver the change people need to see.