6. What analysis has the Welsh Government made of the effectiveness of the current configuration of hospital services in South Wales East? OQ58066

I thank the Member for that. The Grange University Hospital opened in 2020, on budget and ahead of schedule. As we emerge from the pandemic, the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board has reviewed its clinical model to ensure optimum delivery of care across all hospitals in the region.

Diolch. First Minister, access to hospital services in the south-east of Wales is a significant problem. I've raised this in the Senedd before, particularly the fact that, when Caerphilly miners hospital closed, the Rhymney valley was left without an A&E. We were told that Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr would have one; the road signs originally said that it would, but the signs were changed and the hospital plans were downgraded. I'm not aware that any public explanation was given about why that has happened. Patients also have to travel long distances now, as we've heard already this afternoon, across the Valleys to get to routine appointments. I've heard from one woman living in Caerphilly who told me that she had to make a 56-mile round trip to get to a gynaecology appointment in Nevill Hall. This overcentralisation of services is impacting on workforce planning and morale. Junior doctors are limited in what learning opportunities they can access under a fragmented system, and medical training is suffering. I've called for a review of how hospital services in the area are configured because of this stress on hospitals, the disarray for staff and disruption to patient care. First Minister, do you agree that such a review is now overdue?

I referred in my original answer to the fact that Aneurin Bevan University Health Board has been reviewing the way in which its structure of hospital services, and not just hospital services, is currently configured. I don't agree with the point the Member made about downgrading and fragmentation; I think the Clinical Futures programme was a model of how a planned system can be developed to provide services in a part of Wales. I'm sure that the Member is right that the model always needs to be kept under review; we've always got to be making sure that it's working as it is intended.

The model is a genuinely thoroughgoing one. It has the Grange hospital providing specialist services and critical care, it has three enhanced local general hospitals—the Royal Gwent, Nevill Hall and Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr—and it then has three further community hospitals—Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan, the Chepstow hospital and the county hospital. And it has urgent primary care centres—so, two new urgent primary care centres, one at the Royal Gwent and one at Nevill Hall, established with additional funding from the Welsh Government. Eighty-two thousand patients have now been seen at those new urgent primary care centres to make sure that people can receive those services as close to home as possible. And then you have, beyond that, the network of primary care services itself.

I'm sure that Delyth Jewell will welcome the ambition in the planned care programme, published by my colleague Eluned Morgan only a couple of weeks ago—[Inaudible.]—people would have had to travel to a hospital to receive can be now provided online with people in their own homes, and that 50 per cent of all follow-up appointments can clinically effectively be delivered in that way. We need to think about how the lessons we have learned over the last couple of years can be put to work to avoid some of those unnecessary and difficult journeys for people who are unwell in the first place and that previously would've been the routine way in which services would be provided. We can do better than that, and in been doing better than that, we can make sure that some of those access issues to which Delyth Jewell has referred can be significantly improved.

I thank the First Minister.