Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:02 pm on 27 November 2019.
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.