Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:59 pm on 15 June 2016.
Thank you for the follow-up question. I expect that when figures are published for April, we’ll see a further improvement on 12-hour waits, and Cardiff and Vale University Local Health Board have actually done a relatively good job in driving down the number of 12-hour waits. They know, from my own point of view, that I expect to see further progress made so that there are fewer and fewer people waiting 12 hours in any of our hospitals here in Cardiff and Vale. So, progress made, but much more progress still needed to do, I think is the point.
It’s important to me that the system is in balance before we head into winter. I don’t want to see an unscheduled care system that has not recovered and is not in a stable place before we get into the winter months and inevitable winter pressure. We all know that, right across the UK family, winter pressures mean that there are changes in the numbers of people coming in and the acuity of people coming in to our unscheduled care system and the length of time it often takes to treat those people as well. We’re not uniquely facing a challenge in that sense, but it’s not just about A&E: it’s about what takes place within the community to avoid people coming into an A&E unit in the first place, and also, on delayed transfers of care, making it so that people are able to leave the hospital when it’s appropriate for them to do so as well. So, that whole-system approach has to be looked at, not just the figures in an A&E unit on our four-hour and our 12-hour figures, but to understand what we can do for the whole-system approach. As I say, I do think you’ll see an improvement again when the figures come out for April.