VAUGHAN GETHING

COLUMNIST

JUST over a year ago, I was delighted to be appointed as Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport by the First Minister.

Over the last 12 months, the Minister for Social Services and Public Health, Rebecca Evans, and I have been working to deliver our Taking Wales Forward Programme for Government commitments to create a healthy and active Wales.

We remain committed to the founding principles of the NHS – healthcare free and accessible to all at the point of need. We are determined to protect and improve the Welsh NHS and ensure it develops to meet future needs. We’re also committed to providing social care services that meet the needs of people across Wales.

That’s why we have protected both health and social services spending, because both services depend on each other.

Combined spending on health and social services per head in Wales is now 6% higher than in England. People who need to access NHS services should expect to be seen in a timely manner.

So I’m really pleased to see the NHS improve its performance across a range of measures, despite increasing demand for services across Wales. The most recent statistics show:

Our ambulance service is reaching over 80% of immediately life-threatening calls within eight minutes, against a target of 65%. That’s a record high since the introduction of the new clinical model;

The number of people waiting over eight weeks for a diagnostic test is the lowest for six years;

The number of people experiencing delayed transfers of care from hospital remains close to record lows, despite the increasing demand;

The end of March saw the best performance against the 26 week and 36 week referral to treatment targets for three years; and

Performance against the Urgent Suspected Cancer target is the best since November 2014.

But we’re not complacent. We’ll continue to do everything we can to ensure patients receive the right treatment, in the right place, at the right time.

Our NHS and social care staff are the foundation of the services they provide. That’s why we’re investing in our staff.

While we have record numbers of hospital doctors, nurses, and midwives and paramedics working within the Welsh NHS, we’ve taken action to attract more health professionals, such as GPs, to come to Wales through our highly successful and high profile “This is Wales: Train, Work, Live” campaign. We’ve made considerable progress in other areas. In January, I launched our new treatment fund, which gives people in Wales faster access to new and innovative treatments not routinely available on the NHS.

We’re continuing to invest in our community and primary care services, with our GP practices in Wales now open for longer.

In social care, we’ve started to raise the limit on the capital people can keep when entering residential care, which will reach £50,000 by the end of this term of government in 2021.

We’ve launched a new National Integrated Autism Service for Wales, to provide lifetime support to children and adults with autism, and their families.

The National Assembly for Wales recently passed the Public Health (Wales) Bill – a new law that will help improve and protect the health and wellbeing of the nation.

So a lot achieved in the first 12 months, but I know there’s much more to do during the years ahead so that we continue to provide health and social care services fit for the 21st century.

Vaughan Gething is the Welsh Health Secretary