Part of 3. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:59 pm on 1 March 2017.
Well, as I said in my response to the Member and, indeed, to his previous question before the new year break, we recognise in particular in Hywel Dda that there’s been a need to improve on where they are. There is something there, as I said, about making sure that specialist practice is undertaken in the service and that they are actually more effective and more efficient in turning round and providing additional capacity. The health board are investing more in that specialist area of provision, and, in fact, we know that more people have been seen in the last three years within Hywel Dda. We know that there have been 24 more assessment clinics in the last year throughout the health board area. But that doesn’t mean that it resolves the whole problem. They need to continue to do that to actually properly get into the backlog. So, I recognise that constituents across the Hywel Dda health board area, some of them are waiting simply too long for this specialist treatment. So, it is about investing in the future—not pretending that we can fix it within a period of months, but to make sure that people see, progressively, an improvement that is sustainable now and in the future.