Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 14 December 2021.
Thank you for your answer, First Minister. I have to say, there are serious concerns being expressed to me that the service is unable to cope with the volume of demand. The sense among nursing professionals is that the service is being overrun, with patients having to wait hours for a basic response. I've been told, for example, that, in the past few weeks, calls have gone unanswered, and one caller had to wait 600 minutes to be triaged. Now, some of these cases need to urgently be sent to the emergency department, but due to the backlog, of course, they're being lost and delayed, to the point where some are giving up. There are no paediatric specialists on the 111 service in the north, so cases involving children, when they finally do get through, are just being referred straight to the emergency department. Similarly, the 111 mental health hub doesn't have sufficient psychiatric specialism to deal with current demand. So, will you, First Minister, accept that the 111 service, which has now, as you say, replaced the GP out-of-hours service in north Wales, isn't delivering as it should, because that's the view expressed to me by very concerned health professionals with years of experience in the field?