The number of people waiting over 36 weeks for their first hospital appointment has jumped significantly for the second consecutive month.
10,123 people had been waiting that long at the end of June, according to statistics released today – a 33 per cent rise on the end of April, when the figure stood at 7,611 and up from almost 9,000 at the end of May.
A Welsh Government target recommends no-one should wait longer than 36 weeks when referred to hospital by their GP.
The total number of people on an NHS waiting list in Wales is now 80 per cent higher than it was when Carwyn Jones became First Minister at the end of 2009. At that point, 227,000 patients were waiting for treatment. At the end of June that figure stood at 410,000.
The Health Minister recently announced a review into NHS funding – and later admitted this would amount to a summer ‘interrogation’ of the budget with the Finance Minister, in order to ensure the health service is set up to prevent patients falling victim to abuse and neglect.
Montgomeryshire Assembly Member, Russell George, has again called for the health budget to be protected in line with inflation – as it is in England.
Commenting, Mr George said:
“These waits lay bare the true scale of the cash crisis in the Welsh NHS.
“Waiting times are no longer creeping up - they're now skyrocketing - fuelled by the Welsh Government’s record-breaking cuts to the health budget.
“Moreover, the figures relating to Powys are deeply misleading because they do not take into account waiting time delays for treatments being commissioned by the Local Health Board.
“The reality is that there are still over 250 Powys patients waiting more than the Welsh Government’s 36 week target, which is largely due to the waiting time policy the health board implemented last November because of budgetary pressures.
“As health boards struggle to break even and balance the books, it is patients and their families who are hit the hardest.
“That’s unacceptable and unfair - particularly for those in pain, the vulnerable, and those suffering from a poor quality of life.”
The finances of the Welsh NHS were laid bare recently by the Wales Audit Office, who conducted its own health review of the ‘unsustainable’ fiscal pressures that all of the Local Health Boards in Wales are having to face over the coming years.
While Powys LHB received a £4m Welsh Government bailout during the last financial year to allow it to break-even, the Wales Audit Office predicts that it will have a £17.5m net funding gap for this current financial year 2013-14 and that is coupled with the fact that it has the largest estimated funding gap compared to its gross operating expenditure of all health boards in Wales, standing at 7.4%.
Mr. George added:
“Powys Health Board is in many respects, being forced into taking many of these decisions to delay patient treatment because of the Welsh Government’s swingeing cuts to core funding being provided to health boards.
“The Minister’s review into funding must come up with more cash to eliminate target busting waiting times and give patients the treatment they deserve.”