Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:28 pm on 1 December 2021.
Thank you very much. Health boards have to develop services on the basis of the local population, and if patients then ask to go somewhere else, that can have an impact and destabilise services in the two health boards. So, if they've planned for one thing and something else happens, evidently that is going to cause problems. I think that it is important to recognise that if, for example, someone wants to go from the Hywel Dda board area to Swansea, what that would mean in the long term for the hospital in Carmarthen. So, we have to think through the implications. So, what we're trying to do is to get health boards to work on a regional scale, but I do think it's important that people understand that we're doing these things not because we want to make life difficult for people, but to ensure that we can provide a service for everyone and ensure that we can plan services for everyone.