The NHS in Wales will get an extra £40 million this year as part of efforts to help it deal with winter pressures, Finance Minister Jane Hutt has announced.
The £40m is the equivalent amount for Wales to the additional £700m the UK Government has given to NHS England.
The Welsh NHS has experienced sustained pressure over the Christmas and New Year period as a result of increased demand from an influx of patients.
Finance Minister Jane Hutt said: “The additional £40m I’m announcing means that in 2014/15, the Welsh NHS will have received nearly a quarter of a billion pounds in extra investment to deliver high-quality, sustainable health services.
“With an additional £295m being invested in 2015/16, which includes the £70m revenue funding as a result of the Autumn Statement, it means increased investment in our Welsh NHS of more than half a billion pounds over two years.”
Welcoming the additional investment, Health and Social Services Minister Mark Drakeford said: “This additional investment in our health service will help our NHS deal with the significant pressures the service is facing – pressures that are being experienced across the UK as a result of increased demand from an influx of sick patients.
“Winter is a very busy period for our health, social care and social services – but our urgent and emergency care services, in particular, are seeing significant extra demand on their services.”
Latest figures show that December 2014 was the busiest for Welsh Accident and Emergency departments in five years.
Around 62,000 people attended major A&E units with just 77.2% being seen within four fours. The Welsh Government target is 95%.
Overall, including minor injury units, almost 77,000 patients were seen with 81% seen within four hours.
Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr’s minor injuries, based in Ystrad Mynach, unit saw 2,181 patients in December last year with 99.4% being seen within four hours. Newport’s Royal Gwent Hospital saw 6,477 at its A&E with 82.4% being seen within four hours.
Elsewhere, Nevill Hall’s A&E in Abergavenny saw 3,566 patients with 89% seen within four hours while the A&E at Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil saw 4,527 patients with 83.2% seen in under four hours.
This money seems a lot but will not reduce the problems at A & E in any significant way without a major re-organisation of the way health care is provided throughout the service. My opinion? Yes it is, but it also happens to be the opinion of the senior A & E consultant at Wrexham Maelor hospital who spoke on Radio Wales this morning.
He said “the patients are my responsibility and at the moment I am failing them abjectly.” He related how a patient was kept on a trolley at his department for 24 hours. He also said, in reply to the presenter’s question on whether things would get better after winter was over “It will still be the same if you talk to me on 1st June and that’s not winter.”
I don’t know the answer but it is clear that something major needs to be done. A shovel full of money is not going to make the problems disappear.
I couldn’t agree more. I also think the reorganisation shouldn’t necessarily be top down reorganisation, but more doctor-led hospitals managing their own budgets and policies while regularly being inspected by a central government organisation.
I would take the free school or academy model and apply it to hospitals across the country.
And I could`nt agree less, FREE AT THE POINT OF NEED.
It is clear , and not a coincident, that leading up to this catistrophic situation in A&E is the fact that people increasingly cannot see thier GP when they are sick, practices are failing and the service they once gave is not now designed as a patient centered provision..
GP practices should employ more Practioner Nurses to take any burdon off over worked Doctors, these staff have proven to be more than efficient, and more than sufficient for most illnesses including diagnosis of quite serious illnesses and in so doing keeping those patients out of hospital and out of A&E.
The other thing which is obvious, and that is those individuals who expound the view that people are `not quite ill enough` to present themselves to A&E would be the first in line to get a sick child or elderly relative treated at A&E if they could not get help locally, and if they deny this they really are prepared to gamble with the health and lives of their loved ones, the other thing that bothers me about thier view is that because they may be able to afford to pay for health care ( having already of course paid once through taxation) they feel they should go to the head of the queue, disgraceful sentiments and ones which certainly would not help the current situation at all.
Finally, the Deputy Health Minister at the Assembly said tonight that 81% of patients being seen within four hours is excelent news. It is not good news when his own target is 95%. we also now hear that many hundreds of patients wait up to 24 hours before they can be treated properly, and this is AFTER they have been seen by medical staff and require hospitalisation. And THAT IS GOOD NEWS? how does that work?
I am surprised that someone who feels we should pay to visit A&E or those politicians who feel these current results are good, have not suggested lowering the Target times.
I am unsure of what we disagree on. As far as I can see; do
we both want free healthcare? Yes! Do we both want more GP’s? Yes! Do we both
want to make GP’s more accessible to the local people? Yes! Do we both want an
NHS which serves the people before serving political targets? Yes!
However, I do believe the current socialist healthcare
system is not sustainable. It is a massive drain on resources with money being
wasted (I call the case where a box of latex rubber gloves ended up costing
£400 when they should have cost £4). Only a system where individual hospitals
can decide what works best for them, and for the communities they serve is
sustainable.
Of course GP practices must employ more nurses. They should
also employ more doctors. Only when local help is freely available can waiting
times be reduced.
The health minister is living in a different world. Four
hours is despicable. I would be interested to see how many people are seen
under two hours which is the maximum acceptable time in my opinion.
What is the solution though? Some people, usually Labour,
seem to think the solution involves setting more targets and throwing more
money at hospitals. Others, usually Conservative, think the solution is in
maintaining the same level of spending but taking steps towards privatisation.
I believe the solution lies with local communities taking responsibility
to help run and maintain a GP surgery which will be inspected regularly by the
health board. The health boards should inspect, not manage. Community
operations work with schools (free schools and academies), and also community centres,
leisure centres etc…
One of the basic things we disagree on is that you think by disenfranchising those who cannot pay, from an efficient health care system, is a way to solve, or ease, some of the current problems in health service.
We also disagree when you say the current socialist health care system is not sustainable, It is a perfectly sustainable model, providing the Government tackle some of the more recent problems, two of which are quite simple to introduce. one, increase Practitioner Nurses in GP surgeries, so that the available number of local GP level appointments are created, whilst increasing the opening times of GP surgeries, secondly, force local authorities to maintain a proper level of Social Care provision in thier areas, to ease the burdon on the Hospitals to release bads for the seriously sick, ( currently waiting in A&E for a bed.).
We do agree however on what appears to be considerable waste on the logistical side of running the Health Service which have a huge impact on the proportion of the health buget used for patient care.
The Health Service is designed as a patient centered provision, (` Which is not free, we all pay for it`) the problem is that individuals with `authroity` for spending the money have lost sight of this, for instance, Providing Potted Plants, do not help patients but the contract for doing so for offices of Health Boards in Wales amounts to tens of thousands of pound contracts.
And we agree, that it is clear that much of the precurement of services and goods needs to be seriously, seriousy, investigated. This should be a top priority for all politicians who want to protect the current model, but, which of them has the guts to do so??
No throwing money at the problem will not really help, I think people need to start using A & E more responsibly rather than using it as a drop in centre if folk can’t get an immediate appiontment with their GP. Perhaps it is time to start charging people for using A&E, a nominal charge of £5 or £10 for walk in cases would maybe take pressure off as people would be put off if it is not a real emergency, a pilot scheme could be trialled to see if it helped the hospitals to cope more effectively. On the subject of NHS and money, why do people who live in Wales get free prescriptions regardless of status, it’s absurd that a millionaire living in Wales can get a free prescription.
I agree with the points raised, it is true people use the hospital rather than the GP but I contend that is not entirely their fault. To get an appointment at a GP often takes weeks, a difficult situation if you are in pain. This was not the case when I was younger, we could and did use the GP rather than the hospital and the service was very quick.
I have mentioned before in these columns that my doctor has often stitched wounds shortly after I sustained injury. Doctors were also far more willing to visit you at home than they are today.
I believe that there will have to be changes, radical changes, to the entire health service if we are to keep it. These may include a charge for a visit to a GP, charges for A & E, prescriptions, etc. This needs to be debated as the system is in chaos. Certain politicians are unwilling to engage in this debate and try to fool us that the system is ‘safe in their hands’ when the reality is that, despite advances in technology, care i the NHS is not a patch on what it was forty years ago. I find this frightening.