Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:40 pm on 15 June 2022.
And politicians in England can criticise the English Government for what they're doing on the loss of community beds too. The problem is that you are putting unsustainable pressure on the care sector, because of the loss of that step-down facility. Resolving the issue, I think, of patient flow will be a major contributor to the work of dealing with the backlog in the health service—the waiting times. But we also need to build in new capacity there and new ideas.
Now, when the Minister announced plans to cut waiting lists and waiting times recently, we were told that some specialisms may be excluded. Incredibly, it was suggested that this could even include orthopaedics, where waiting times are so, so long, but we have a plan for orthopaedics. It's called the national clinical strategy for orthopaedic surgery. I was given a presentation today by the two consultants and the manager who've drawn it up, and it is brilliant. Exactly the kind of expert-led, in-depth, data-driven work that we need. They propose three new build stand-alone elective orthopaedic hubs, they want a national multidisciplinary workforce review, and they want to see the establishment of a Welsh orthopaedic network with the delegated powers necessary to drive this forward. Will the Minister assure us that she will do everything in her power to deliver that?