Ambulance response time targets have been missed again in Caerphilly County Borough, latest statistics reveal.
In April, Caerphilly had the third worst ambulance response times in the whole of Wales with 48.5% of ambulances arriving within the eight minute target time.
The target number of ambulances responding to urgent 999 calls, classed as ‘Category A’, within the eight minutes is 65%. The national figure was 57.2% – an increase from March’s figure of 53.3%.
Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, Kirsty Williams, said: “People in Caerphilly deserve better than this.
“The Welsh Labour Government has failed to meet its response times target for nearly a year now. This continued failure is hugely disappointing and just goes to show how dismally the Welsh Labour Government has handled our ambulance service. Sadly, these figures show Wales has by far the worst urgent response times in mainland UK.
“Following the Ambulance Review, the Health Minister has stated that the eight minute target is to remain – a decision I fully support. This target is vital for us to be able to track how our ambulance service is performing compared to the rest of the UK. At the moment, we are a long way behind the rest of the UK.
“I recognise there were a huge amount of calls made in April, but we are still a long way off from receiving even an adequate service.
“Working for the ambulance service is an incredibly difficult job and we are all hugely thankful of the work they do, but at the moment the are forced to work in what is clearly a failing system provided by the Welsh Labour Government.”
Conservative Darren Millar, Shadow Minister for Health, said: “These latest ambulance response times make for yet more depressing reading about how the NHS is performing.
“The Welsh Labour Government’s target of 65% of ambulances responding to a life-threatening call within eight minutes is below the target set elsewhere in the UK and even that is being routinely missed.
“Wales has now had 14 years of Labour Health Ministers who have been responsible for the decline in ambulance service performance and, while I appreciate the Health Minister is beginning to implement some of the recommendations of the latest review into the ambulance service, axing A&E services and record-breaking cuts in the Welsh NHS are only going to make matters worse.”
The health service is in decline, it is not only the ambulance response times that need to be addressed. Because of disastrous meddling, by the last Labour government, in the contracts that general practitioners work under we have lost much of the service we used to enjoy. Doctors were given huge increases in pay and given the option to cease working in the evenings and weekends in return for relinquishing about £100 a week. As they would still earn far more than before the changes it is unsurprising that most doctors took this option.
The A & E service has been drastically cut, and is to be cut further still, at a time when people are increasingly using this service because they cannot get access to their GP. This means that even if the ambulance arrived in a timely fashion the A & E staff are overwhelmed with work and there will be a delay before the patient is seen. Two years ago I spent more than seven hours in the waiting room of the Royal Gwent with a stroke victim before the patient was examined by a doctor.
Once lucky enough to be admitted to hospital the service is patchy, I have recent experience of many local hospitals, either as a patient or a family member of the patient. These were, UCW, R. Gwent, Rookwood, Caerphilly Miners, Ystrad Mynach, Ystrad Fawr, Redwood Memorial, Llandoc and Neville Hall. In my opinion care in several of these hospitals was poor, especially Royal Gwent and Heath. The latter hospital, no doubt wanting to free up a bed, said the patient was stable. When she was transferred , ironically to the now closed Miners, doctors immediately picked up that she had an infection and required immediate surgery to deal with metal work from an earlier operation that was now poking out of the skin of her ankle.
The health service as we knew it is in crisis. The South Wales Programme, as I have already said in this paper, is an exercise in papering over the cracks and will leave things in a still worse condition in a couple of years. The whole health service needs to be over-hauled and people who use and pay for it, in other words us, the common or garden voter, need to make our voice heard above the loud drone of the ‘experts’ that are depriving us of what Clement Attlee’s government built. At the same time telling us that what we are getting is an enhanced service.
I agree with Richard Williams above but would add.
Both England and Wales have accepted the Beecham Review which is to centralise hospital services. The Beecham Review stated that Health Boards be set up with highly paid staff. The idea is the more you pay the better the management. Hywel Dda Health Board alone costs £14 Million a year. To centralise huge sums have been thrown at the central hospitals. They have dismantled a system that was working fine. The problem all along was the lack of clinicians and nurses.If this money had instead been spent on getting Doctors through our own Universities and on Teams sent world wide to bring in clinicians there would have been better outcomes. Much could be saved by paying attention to inefficient hospital systems. Centralisation is a crime against poor people who have no transport and the infirm who have to travel much further for treatment.