Vaughan Gething: I thank the Member for his second question on the area. On this, there are two points that I would make: the first is that in some of the areas on diagnostics where we have waits, it is tied up in workforce. So, there are challenges for us, for example, in training more sonographers in Wales. Where they’re currently trained, you tend to see better outcomes. For example, Swansea and west...
Vaughan Gething: I thank the Member for the question and for highlighting an area where we’ve made real progress over the last calendar year. Because at the high point that we reached in summer last year, we had a real challenge in understanding what could and should take place to reduce the diagnostic waiting times. We’re now in a much better place and MRI is a good example: there are a number of health...
Vaughan Gething: I don’t think local government provide direct mental health services, but they do provide services that have an impact on mental health and well-being. We all recognise that. For example, the conversation earlier about physical health and activity. Being physically active isn’t just a good thing for your physical health; it’s actually incredibly good for your mental health and...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. I do wonder if you thought you were asking a question about the English system, because in Wales we have ring-fenced mental health funding, and as I said earlier, it is the biggest single area of spend within NHS Wales. I’ve seen campaigns that have taken place on an England and Wales basis, and, actually, they’re really talking about the English system. I...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. Mental health is a priority area for this Government. As I said yesterday, in response to a range of questions, we will be refreshing the mental health delivery plan. That will take place this year as well, so it’s not been forgotten. And, really importantly, in undertaking both the consultation and delivering the action plan, we’ll be talking with and...
Vaughan Gething: Well, thank you for the series of questions in there. I don’t share your optimistic assessment that if people understand there’s a test or the risk of cancer that people will undertake the test. I’m not even sure that a lot of people don’t make that choice. So, there are lots of risk factors for health outcomes that people ignore. There is often a very high awareness of health...
Vaughan Gething: Well, I think there’s a fairly high awareness of both cervical cancer screening and also bowel cancer screening. The challenge is how we make it easy for people to take that up. On bowel cancer, in particular, it’s not so much about the advice people get, because we will follow the advice we’re given about where is the most appropriate point for people to be screened, but it’s about...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. It’s a fair point to raise about what we need to do, not so much about the health service responding to the significant rise in cancer referrals—in fact, in the last seven years, there’s been a doubling in urgent cancer referrals into the NHS, and it’s a remarkable achievement that it has managed to deal with those in such a timely manner, given the...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. I was very pleased to join you in the event yesterday to highlight Diabetes Week and the work they’re undertaking here in Wales to improve the position. The point about undiagnosed diabetes applies both to type 1 and type 2 and the risk factors that are there. It’s a particularly difficult case, and I’ll be happy to meet again with you and the cross-party...
Vaughan Gething: I thank the Member for his follow-up question. Of course, we have two types of diabetes: type 1, which is not related to lifestyle factors at all, and type 2, which is, frankly, lifestyle-factor related. So, we need to deal with both of those issues. A number of children at varying ages understand that they will have type 1 diabetes and we do need to make sure that the care and support that...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question in Diabetes Week. We invest nearly £100 million each year in specific diabetes care and we will continue to invest £1 million a year for improvement through the NHS-led diabetes implementation group. We expect to see improved patient outcomes by consistently meeting national service standards, supporting patient self-management through education programmes and...
Vaughan Gething: We published a strategic plan for primary care services in Wales early last year, backed up by significant annual investment of over £40 million. The First Minister also recently made a commitment to look at increasing GP numbers in Wales, in addition to other healthcare professionals who can support GPs.
Vaughan Gething: The health board has made positive progress on a number of fronts under special measures, but I expect to see continued and sustained improvement in key areas before it is removed from special measures.
Vaughan Gething: We are investing £750,000 in the roll-out of the Choose Pharmacy information technology application to 400 pharmacies across Wales by March 2018. This will enable health boards to optimise the contribution of community pharmacies in the delivery of high-quality primary care services in Wales.
Vaughan Gething: While I am encouraged to see a further decline in the number of adults smoking in Wales, it is clear many of us continue to eat and drink too much, and are not exercising enough. I will be making an oral statement on the results in Plenary on 21 June.
Vaughan Gething: The Welsh Government provides support to improve workplace health and well-being through a number of approaches including Healthy Working Wales, NHS occupational health services and the European social fund-funded in-work support service.
Vaughan Gething: My priorities are to deliver and integrate more services locally, improve access and to continue to address service sustainability through our national primary care plan and I expect health boards to develop primary care clusters and to invest in the capacity and capability of the workforce.
Vaughan Gething: Tinnitus therapy advice and counselling services are available in Wales although they do not all use the tinnitus retraining methodology.
Vaughan Gething: We already invest in training opportunities across Wales. I recognise that there are difficulties in recruiting to some training programmes in north Wales. We are working with the Wales Deanery and others to identify steps to address this situation, including more focused planning arrangements and different training models.
Vaughan Gething: I thank Mohammad Asghar for his particular points in an area of real challenge for us. I’m particularly grateful that you’ve highlighted the fact that, of people on the waiting list, there is a significantly higher than expected number, certainly out of proportion with the general population, of people from black and Asian origin communities, and yet, of the people who are registered on...
