4. Will the Minister make a statement on the performance of Swansea Bay University Health Board? OAQ54748

I expect patients to be seen and treated in a timely manner and within our targets. We have made available £50 million to health boards to build on the recent progress and improve waiting times further by March 2020. Swansea Bay University Health Board has received its share of this national funding.

Performance data due to be discussed at Swansea bay health board meeting this week makes for difficult reading, as it shows significant problems in a number of areas. In October, ambulances waited outside A&E departments for 2,778 hours, and waits for planned care are also worsening, with 4,256 patients waiting more than 36 weeks for treatment, an increase of over 2,000 since April. Now, despite the health board being in targeted intervention since September 2016, the figures in many areas are getting worse, not better, and a reflection of a lack of capacity in both health and social care. So, what are you doing, Minister, to turn things around?  

Well, it is more than just the money that we've announced. Part of this is outside the control of the health board; we've discussed recently the tax and pension challenges, the fact that that has taken out capacity within each of our health boards, but that isn't the whole story and I won't try and say that it is. So, I've had correspondence recently from the interim chair of the health board about the steps they are taking on a range of these measures. They have now recovered protected capacity for some of their orthopaedic capacity to try to eat into that. They expect to improve to the end of this year, but there are challenges in both unscheduled care that make a real difference to scheduled care. Part of the reason why they've seen a movement backwards is because of the challenge of unscheduled care, needing to have bed space for unscheduled care patients. That's why I go back to the whole system because, actually, those medically fit people shouldn't be in a hospital bed; they should be in a different setting with the care and support they need. That's partly about the health service; it's also partly about the partnership with our colleagues in local government and housing in particular.

So, I do expect that he will see, by the end of the year, further progress; I expect, more importantly than that, the citizens of the Swansea university health board area will see further improvement in the delivery and the timely delivery of patient care.  

Minister, thank you for that answer and can I support Dai Lloyd's question? Because I've got a case of a constituent who actually last night phoned for an ambulance because their daughter required medical help. It took an hour and a half for a first responder, and that person then put a morphine injection drip in, eight hours for an ambulance, and when they got to Morriston Hospital they were sitting in the ambulance waiting outside. I visited Morriston Hospital A&E last week; there were 10 ambulances outside. There is a huge problem at this point in time, and we're not even at peak winter pressure yet. I appreciate that the ambulances are sitting there, they can't get out the people, people can't get off ambulances to go into A&E, can't get through A&E into beds in the hospital, because people can't get out of the hospital. There is a systemic problem somewhere in Morriston. Will you call in the chair and chief executive of the health board to actually ask them to explain to you directly how they are addressing this problem? We can't expect to go through winter, and our constituents can't expect to go through the winter, sitting in ambulances outside an A&E unit because they haven't yet resolved the problem of getting patients through the hospital.  

I'm seeing the chair of the health board in question on Monday to have this discussion.