Vascular Services

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 1 February 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:10, 1 February 2022

I don't believe that a public inquiry, with the length of time that it would take, would be of much benefit to patients in north Wales. What I think is that there is an independent review of the service carried out by the Royal College of Surgeons, and there is part 2 of that still to report. I expect that report to be taken seriously by the board and by the people responsible for the service so that the changes that have taken place in vascular services, not just in north Wales, as the Member says—. Vascular services have changed across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is a more specialist discipline than it used to be, and if you need not just the day in, day out vascular attention but specialist services, then you are better off as a patient being looked after by people who undertake those procedures all the time, rather than by people who do it every now and then as part of that wider range of duties that they undertake. That is the nature of modern medicine. It's challenging, because people inevitably see things changing and people are very attached to the service that they have. But right across the United Kingdom in vascular services this has been the pattern—specialist services brought together, and the more routine aspects continue to be carried out more locally. That's what the model provides. It is now, as I say, for those people who are responsible for that service, clinically responsible for it and responsible for it at a board level, to make sure that all the investment that has gone into it pays off in a better service for patients in north Wales.