Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: The health board is in targeted intervention for communications and engagement. This means that there is direct and focused action by Welsh Government to improve communication within the health board.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thanks. Well, first of all, clinicians should be writing notes; they should be writing notes at the time of treatment. So, there's no excuse for that; that's a requirement. But, in terms of lost notes, I think part of the answer to this is to digitise, which is why I've spent quite a lot of my time trying to make sure that we make sure that we have a far more modern NHS, that we invest in the...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board is responsible for the provision of safe, sustainable, high-quality healthcare services for its local population, based on the best and most up-to-date clinical evidence and advice. We've also provided additional investment to support them.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Well, we have been training people, and we have seen 54 per cent more people working in the NHS over the past 20 years. In Betsi now, we see that almost 20,000 people work for the health board, and there are plans to recruit 380 more during the next two years. And the idea there is that the board wants to get local people to take those posts, so they have a plan for that. And what is...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thanks very much. I'm really pleased to hear that things are going from strength to strength in Llandudno, and, certainly, when I visited there, one of the things I really focused on was what are these people doing there, how long have they been here, what's the plan for these people, and it was clear. I met one man there, I remember, who'd had his leg amputated, but he was in a second floor...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: We're working to improve bowel cancer outcomes by improving diagnostic pathways, lowering the screening age in line with UK National Screening Committee recommendations, and improving the quality of bowel cancer treatment.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thanks very much, Vikki. Those figures are clearly too low and unacceptable. That's one of the reasons why today I called a cancer summit meeting—a calling together all of the health boards and the leads for cancer in each of the health boards. One of the issues in particular in relation to lower gastrointestinal cancers is that we've seen, partly as a result of that increased screening, a...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you. I'm glad to see that we've reduced the age at which we're now sending out faecal immunochemical tests to the over-55s, but you're right, we've got to go further, but we've got to do it at the same time as increasing capacity. We are now looking at training more clinicians, so that when that demand—and you've heard that demand, a 38 per cent increase—. That is a huge increase,...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: As of 11 October, a total of 363,000 COVID-19 vaccination boosters have been administered in Wales. The programme is on track for all eligible people to receive an invitation for their booster by 30 November, in line with the commitment given in our winter respiratory vaccination strategy, which was published on 15 July.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thanks very much. Well, we are talking about trying to get this booster to 1.6 million eligible people in Wales. That's being delivered through 400 vaccination sites, so I think that does give you the coverage that should allow people to take up that opportunity. As I say, our target is to get to a 75 per cent uptake of that cohort, and so far we're on track. So, we're getting to it. I'm...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you very much. The Hywel Dda University Health Board workforce is now at record levels, but we recognise the workforce challenges in mid and west Wales alongside significant demand pressures on services.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you very much. This is an area that I have asked my officials to focus on. It's difficult to do it, because, as you can imagine, in terms of retention, if you have 1,000 people off sick with COVID, what are you going to do to fill those vacancies? How are you going to take the pressure off those people who have to make up for that sick leave? And if we don't use agency nurses, then the...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Okay, so, when you write a law, you've got to comply with the law, and if the law says, 'You've got have x many nurses in a particular ward', you've got to comply with that law. If you can't do that because you don’t have the nurses, you're in breach of the law. So, what's the point of writing a law that you know you can't comply with? And at the moment, it's really difficult for us to...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Diolch yn fawr. I welcome the report, and I'd like to commend the committee on its really thorough approach to the review. The report explores a wide spectrum of areas that can impact patient flow through our hospitals, and ultimately on to discharge and recovery. What we've heard today is how complex the situation is. It has got to be a whole-system approach, because unless we do it as a...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Of course.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Altaf, you'll understand that the real challenge is not actually infrastructure, it's staffing. So, that's the issue, and we know that the staffing issue is something that is challenging everywhere, but particularly social care. So, we want people to go home, we want that support in the community, and we're having difficulty with recruitment. Part of that difficulty in recruitment, I think we...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: I'll take an intervention.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Gareth, I would absolutely love to do that, that is absolutely our ambition as a Government, it's in our manifesto, that's what we want to see, it's just that your Government has just made that a hell of a lot more difficult. We've just had a £207 million bill for energy that we weren't expecting, and we've got a bit of a rebate from the UK Government—maybe £100 million—but that leaves...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you. Rhun, you asked about hospital beds. Well, we've got considerably more hospital beds in Wales, according to the Nuffield Trust, than they do in England. There are 270 beds per 100,000 in Wales; 170 beds per 100,000 in England. But what we're keen to do is to make sure that we get into that reablement space that you talked about. It's not just about hospital beds, it's about...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you very much.
