Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 20 September 2022.
Well, I thank again the leader the opposition for that. I am very familiar with the second-offer scheme that we had here in Wales over a decade ago, having been heavily involved in it at the time. We already use capacity outside the area in which somebody lives in order to be able to accelerate treatment wherever we can. We are using capacity in the not-for-profit sector. We are encouraging health boards to make sure that if they are able to, they work collaboratively together, so if there is capacity in a neighbouring health board, that becomes used for patients as well.
There were downsides to the second-offer scheme that those of us involved will remember. Many patients are very reluctant to travel long distances for treatment. What they look for is effective treatment as close to home as possible, and not everybody is resourced—not simply in monetary terms, but just in terms of having somebody who can go with you. Our second-offer scheme paid for you to be accompanied by a family member or a friend if you were going a long distance for an orthopaedic operation, for example. Not everybody's in a position to be able to find somebody in a position to do all of that, so what you found was that some people were able to take advantage of the second-offer scheme—not always the people who were in greatest clinical need—whereas other people, their circumstances simply meant that the scheme wasn't useable by them. So, a simple return to a scheme of the sort we had before, I don’t think that is what we will be looking for. But we do expect the health service to use every available piece of capacity, and not simply to expect that people will use the capacity directly available in their own local health board area.