Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:14 pm on 4 February 2020.
The Member for Rhondda rightly raises the amount of, or numbers of, patients that each consultant has to deal with, but, of course, another issue is about the spread of consultants across specialisms. If we're looking to be effective in outcomes and effective in the deployment of money, one of the things we must ensure is that, when a patient comes into hospital, they do not then submit to the revolving-door syndrome, where they leave because something is fixed, but actually, they had a number of things wrong with them, a number of conditions, or a mental health issue, and then, just a month later, or a few months later, they are readmitted again under a different consultant. This is partly driven by the fact that so many consultants are very specialism driven.
First Minister, can you please tell me what HEIW might be doing to ensure that we look at patients in a more holistic way, by employing more general medical consultants in hospital and more orthogeriatricians, for example? Elderly people, they go in because they've broken a hip, but they actually then develop pneumonia, or they have mental health issues, or dementia that's not picked up—bang, they're back in again. It doesn't help the NHS; it doesn't help the person to stay at home. If, while we had them there, we dealt with them in an effective way instead of just focusing on one issue, I believe that we could transform some elements of our services within hospitals. I'd be interested to hear your opinion.