NHS Wales waiting lists hit new record

Just over 20,600 have been waiting more than two years for hospital treatment.

Waiting lists for hospital treatment have hit a new record highs in Wales, according to the latest official figures.

There were 768,899 patient pathways on the list in March, a rise of nearly 6,400 on the month.

The number of individual patients waiting for treatment is also a record - 599,100.

This accounts for those patients who are waiting for more than one treatment after being referred by their GP.

There was also a rise in those patients waiting more than a year, although those waiting more than two years continue to fall.

A Welsh government spokesperson said: “We will continue to focus on reducing waiting times and improving access to NHS care and services for people throughout Wales."

A&E waiting times improved over the month but the ambulance performance against the response time for life-threatening calls worsened over the month.

Cancer waiting times - against the target for starting treatment within two months of suspicion - was the best monthly peformance for two years.

The figures show 60.5% of patients started treatment within the target of 62 days.

This remains below the 75% target, however.

There has also been a continued rise in the number of long waits for first outpatient appointments.

This has now been rising for the last six months, with the target that no-one should be waiting more than 12 months having been set for December 2022.

There are still 61,100 people waiting.

For emergency waiting times, 70.3% of patients were seen at A&E within the four hour target.

This was an improvement on the previous month.

When just major A&E units are looked at, to allow a comparison with England, then 59.4% were seen within four hours, slightly worse than in England.

There were more than 3,000 people attending A&E units each day, a rise on the previous month.

The average wait was two hours and 40 minutes, seven minutes quicker than the previous month.

On the longest treatment waits, these can be adjusted to allow a comparison with England.

The figures show on consultant-led specialisms, nearly 143,300 patient pathways were waits of more than a year. That's 20.9% of the overall waiting list in Wales.

One in five of these are orthopaedic patients.

But in England, only 4.1% of patient pathways are 12-month waits.

There are also more than 20,600 patient pathways of more than two years.

This has been reducing over the last two years but in England there are only 232 patient pathways this long.

Sam Rowlands, Conservative health spokesman called the figures "atrocious" and said they showed why Labour could not be trusted to run the health service.

“Unlike in England where progress is being made to cut waiting lists, the Labour Welsh government are taking us back to square one with the longest NHS waits on record," he said.

Plaid Cymru said waiting lists remained "stubbornly high".

Health spokesman Mabon ap Gwynfor said: "They are a symptom of a system that is collapsing because of 25 years of policy failure by a Labour government - a failure to train and recruit enough GPs, nurses, and allied health professionals; a failure to fix social care by not valuing dedicated care workers enough."

Prof Jon Barry, director in Wales at the Royal College of Surgeons, said: “Despite efforts from staff to clear the backlog, there remains a long way to go to get waits back on an acceptable footing.

"In the meanwhile, patients continue to have their lives put on hold and we are particularly concerned about patients waiting for more than a year for treatment."

Dr Rob Perry, Welsh vice president at the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, added: “Whoever forms the next Westminster government must commit to providing the devolved nations with the resources and support they need so they can deliver the UK-wide improvement in emergency medicine which our members want, and our patients need and deserve.”

The Welsh government said emergency departments had recorded their busiest April on record.

"Despite this, performance in emergency departments improved against the four and 12-hour targets in April," said a spokesperson.

“But ambulance performance is not where we want it to be.

"The average response to amber calls did improve, however, and more than 80% of red 999 calls received a response in 15 minutes.

"We have been clear with health boards about the need to release ambulance crews from emergency departments quickly to support faster response times to those in most need.”

Figures showed more than 23,000 hours were "lost" in April by ambulances having to wait longer than 15 minutes outside major A&E units in Wales to hand over patients.