Betsi Cadwaladr 'has made progress', says health minister

A health board will not remain in special measures "forever and a day", Wales' health minister has said.

Betsi Cadwaladr became the first health board in Wales to be placed in special measures in June 2015.

Vaughan Gething said the health board "has made progress".

But he did not provide a timetable for bringing the north Wales health board out of more direct Welsh Government control.

Plaid Cymru said the health board should be broken up, while the Welsh Conservatives called for an independent review.

The decision to put the health board in special measures came after a report found "institutional abuse" at the Tawel Fan mental health ward at Glan Clwyd Hospital in Denbighshire, which closed in 2013.

Mr Gething, who was deputy health minister at the time, said he had not expected that the health board would still be in special measures five years later.

Speaking to the BBC's Politics Wales programme on the week of the fifth anniversary of that decision, Mr Gething, now health minister, said: "Our challenge now is: what progress has the health board made, and it has made progress and what is still outstanding?"

Betsi Cadwaldr was put in special measures in June 2015, after a report found "institutional abuse" at the Tawel Fan mental health ward at Glan Clwyd Hospital

What's happened in the past five years?

The health board has had many issues since being in special measures, including:

• An investigation that was launched after officials at Betsi failed to report daily Covid-19 death numbers for a month because of issues with the reporting system.

• Ongoing concerns over the centralisation of specialist vascular services.

• Criticism for hiring a consultant dubbed "Marbella Man" at a cost of almost £2,000 a day.

• Controversial plans to not pay nurses for their 30-minute breaks were scrapped.

Recently, the health board apologised after almost 1,700 mental health patients were wrongly discharged from support services during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Gething told BBC Politics Wales that was "plainly a mistake" and that mistakes "happen in good and high-performing organisations too".