Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:49 pm on 13 July 2016.
Thank you for the question, put with your usual calm and dignified manner. I would, of course, note that, in complaining about no reference to RTT, there was no reference to RTT in your question. If you want an RTT question answered, then actually ask it. When it comes to RTT across the NHS, we’ve actually seen significant improvements in the last six months. [Interruption.] I’ll answer your question if you want to be quiet and actually let me speak. In the last six months, we saw significant progress in RTT within Wales—a really impressive improvement right across the NHS. But we recognise that we have real challenges in maintaining and improving headline performance, including RTT, as well as resolving and reforming the services that deliver that. What we can’t do is expect to see sustained improvement in RTT if we don’t change the models of care that we are running. Just putting more resource into that won’t deliver the sort of services that people expect and deserve.
So, we need to manage two things: we need to make sure that, in a difficult time with less financial resource, we do make sure that we see improvement in that headline rate of performance, and, at the same time, the way in which that care is provided changes as well. That’s why the planned care programme, with plans for orthopaedics, ENT and ophthalmology, to name but three, is really important, because changing the way we provide these services is actually the real answer to having the high-quality care people expect in the industrial volumes in which people do now attend for these particular treatments. So, I’m actually optimistic about what we’ll be able to achieve in Wales, and I hope that your constituents, and others, will see a real difference in the quality of care provided, the outcomes of that care, and the experience of the care that they receive from our national health service.