Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:07 pm on 25 April 2018.
What's just been outlined in Betsi is also true of Hywel Dda, and I have a constituent who's also been told to pay £1,000 for a multiparametric MRI scan. The reason for that is that, as you say, the NICE guidelines talk about such a scan following a biopsy, but we have health boards in Wales—Cardiff and the Vale, Cwm Taf and Aneurin Bevan—that offer these scans as a routine diagnostic tool with, as has just been set out, improved pick-up rates of some 93 per cent, and less risk of bleeding, infection and sepsis following the more invasive other tools that have been used for prostate cancer following raised prostate-specific antigen levels.
I don't understand—I did write to you regarding this constituent—why it is we have this postcode lottery on prostate diagnosis in Wales. Yes, the NICE guidelines are there, but they are the minimum requirement. Since we have three health boards in Wales offering more, then surely all of those health boards in Wales should offer more, because, as you say in your letter to me, there is evidence that this is good practice. Well, if it's good practice and it's evidenced, offer it for everyone and offer it for my constituents in Hywel Dda as well.