Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:08 pm on 18 October 2022.
Llywydd, I think Hefin David makes an important point—that trying to tackle the pressures in the system by focusing only on one aspect of it will not produce the improvements that we need to see. Many of the pressures on the ambulance service do indeed come because other parts of the system itself are under strain. I’ve tried to explain in my earlier answers that one of the reasons why ambulances don’t get to people as quickly as we would like them to is because they are waiting to discharge patients into hospitals who themselves cannot discharge patients into social care. I agree with Hefin David that the out-of-hours service has a very important part to play in that. It’s why we’re providing more investment—£20 million more investment in the current financial year—to increase capacity in urgent primary care centres and same-day emergency care. We’re diversifying the workforce. It’s not just a matter of out-of-hours doctors—there are other staff that work in that service. We’re expanding the service, with nine urgent primary care centres now open, two of them in the Aneurin Bevan health board area. They see 5,000 patients a month at the moment, and that’s 15 per cent of the capacity in the system for out-of-hours services overall. And we’re recruiting more staff. Aneurin Bevan, the area that Hefin David will know best, Llywydd, recently advertised for more salaried GPs. They’ve appointed four, there may be four more on the way from that recruitment exercise, and those new salaried GPs are all having out-of-hours sessions included within their job plans. Thirty-three thousand people use the out-of-hours service every month in Wales; 94 per cent of those are treated in their own homes either by a home visit, by the advice that they get, or by attending an out-of-hours centre and being sent home. So, only 6 per cent of all the calls that are seen by the out-of-hours service translate into onward pressure into the hospital system. The out-of-hours service does a very important job. We need it to do more as part of the overall effort to improve the way the interrelated parts of the health service can function effectively together.