Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:42 pm on 11 October 2022.
The NHS is a great concern for all of us here, and you can see that. Minister, we all appreciate the challenges faced by our health service in responding to a range of pressures. People are unable to have treatment or surgery quickly enough; patients well enough to leave hospital are not able to go home quickly enough; and some people are ending up in hospital with conditions that could be managed at home. I welcome the investment at Neath Port Talbot hospital, as Mike Hedges said, to increase the number of operating theatres with the aim of it becoming the health board's centre of excellence for orthopaedics and spinal surgery. There is a lot of work to do, and health boards should be supported in taking these key decisions quickly to address the growing crisis in the NHS. Can we have a statement from the health Minister setting out how our health service will tackle the range of pressures, how we will advance the integration of our services to become more seamless, and how we will address recruitment and retention of our doctors and nurses? Thank you.