Time to build a truly National Health Service here in Wales

FOLLOWING the recent Welsh Conservatives reshuffle in the Senedd, it’s been a pleasure to return to the health and social care portfolio and get stuck in after a decade away.

At such a challenging time for our great NHS and social care sector, it’s been humbling to see some of the fantastic work and bravery which has been displayed by our heroic frontline staff in the ongoing crusade against coronavirus.

We have some of the most talented health practitioners in the world and their skills have come to the fore during this tough period.

From doctors and nurses saving lives in our hospitals, to scientists in Wales leading global efforts to decipher and track changes to the genetic code of coronavirus, we have a proud story to tell.

And it isn’t just isolated to Covid19 but across all areas of healthcare, as demonstrated this week with the news critically ill children in Wales will be the first in the UK to be offered a new NHS test that reads their entire DNA in the fight against genetic illness.

No response is perfect and criticism has been levelled at all governments and it’s easy for me to sit here and commentate with a Captain Hindsight perspective.

However, ahead of a potential second spike in the next few months, it’s imperative the Welsh Labour Government and ministers use the summer to learn all possible lessons from the first battle.

In my humble opinion, and with the virus currently at a very low circulation, it’s vital we use this key period to ramp up our testing capacity and capability in Wales, including routine screening for frontline staff, to ensure we are fully prepared for the winter months.

This is important not only to save lives but also to ensure that we can avoid other disastrous knock-on effects such as a shutdown of schools and the devastating impact this has on our children and their wellbeing.

These have to be priorities and success will be dependent on scaled-up testing capacity and a highly effective track and trace programme, which to the government’s credit appears to be developing, albeit case rates are relatively low.

This will also enable us to address the other critical health issues we are seeing build up in the system, such as the cancer care time bomb and waiting list backlog.

For example, the importance of reopening the single cancer pathway and ensuring it’s maintained during any future spike cannot be overstated, with a staggering collapse in referrals and entries during lockdown. In April only 4,913 patients entered the cancer pathway, which was a frightening deviation of around 8,000 on the monthly average prior lockdown.

Ignoring problems such as cancer, cancelled operations and mental health can have serious consequences – now or in the future – and we can’t afford the cure being worse than the disease.

As well as tackling the immediate challenge of Covid-19, as politicians in the Welsh Parliament it will also be our job to put forward a set of policies to the public at next May’s Senedd Elections.

First and foremost, I want to tackle the separate systems that exist in all facets of our Welsh NHS across seven different health boards and cause an administrative headache for staff. In name we might have a National Health Service in Wales but in practice it’s very different with a multitude of processes and systems in place which can make matters extremely difficult in a normal healthcare setting, never mind one fighting a pandemic.

We’ve seen the pitfalls of this throughout the crisis, with some health boards recording deaths in a different way, and the Welsh Government-run Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board (another problem altogether!) not even using the system specially designed to record such deaths.

We also see this frustration in normal day-to-day practices with the postcode lottery in the commissioning of services or the recruitment of staff, where inexplicably a nurse from Cardiff has to apply as an external applicant to North Wales.

It’s why we need to see positive reform of the administration and management of the NHS in Wales by building a system that does what it says on the tin – a truly National Health Service.

Not one that is suffocated by diktats, damages efficiency and hamstrings our superb frontline staff.

It’s time to build a truly National Health Service in Wales, one which removes unnecessary bureaucracy and harnesses the wide array of strengths of our doctors, nurses, porters and staff.

■ Andrew RT Davies is the new Welsh Conservatives health spokesman