Waiting Times

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:31 pm on 4 November 2020.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 1:31, 4 November 2020

I think there are a couple of points to make. The Member correctly highlights the significant difference in the number of people waiting a long time, and that is one of the harms that we specifically recognise in needing to balance in all of the action we're taking during the course of the pandemic. There are a number of things that we have done to enable appointments to go ahead, in primary care, which the Member will know something about, in the way that video consultations are taking place, but also there are times when people need person-to-person contact for effective treatment options to be run through.

In terms of what we are doing, there is activity that is taking place, but we know we're going to have a significant backlog at the end of the pandemic. So, as well as the quarter 3 and quarter 4 operating frameworks that the health service is working to, we're already having to forecast and look forward to the significant recovery that we need. Because the Member's right that Sancta Maria is not a sustainable, long-term answer to that. In having, if you like, COVID-lite and COVID-free areas, which the service is planning for and so we are doing much more non-COVID activity because our NHS has organised itself in a way to try to do that, the big challenge is, with community transmission as it is, keeping coronavirus out of a site, even if we designated it as a non-COVID site, is actually really challenging and difficult. And the way that our hospitals sites are set up, they're not currently set up, if you like, into 'hot' and 'cold' sites, where you have planned care on one hospital site totally and unscheduled care on another.

So, this is a much bigger reform than I think we're going to be able to deliver within the coming days and weeks. But we do have designated zones, and that's why the infection prevention and control measures are so important, but it's also why the messages to the public are so important—if community transmission continues as it is, then we're unlikely to be able to see coronavirus kept out of all of our hospitals, regardless of the designation we provide to them.