Our NHS staff need more support from Government
HEALTH problems have again come to the top of the political agenda in recent days, particularly in the Cwm Taf area where a report into maternity services was about as damning as you could imagine.
Maternity services were brought in to special measures there as a result.
Of course, our health board, Betsi Cadwaladr has been in special measures for years now, and the Welsh Labour Government is clearly failing to turn things around.
I had an opportunity in Health Questions at the Assembly last week to raise issues brought to my attention by constituents about orthopaedic services.
It makes me really angry that people are being told they have to wait over two years for orthopaedic operations. Two years!
I wrote to the Betsi Cadwaladr health board recently on behalf of a patient waiting for a new knee – a common occurrence, as one in four of the hundreds of cases my office has dealt with relates to health matters.
The response I received from the Health Board said that some 2,200 patients were awaiting orthopaedic treatment and that waiting times for elective surgery was around 100 weeks.
A fortnight later, I got a response relating to another constituent’s case saying that waiting times for knee operations or hip operations were more than 110 weeks!
It’s clearly unacceptable. I suggested to the Labour Health Minister that his ‘special measures’ weren’t enough and that we needed some sort of emergency measures.
Or perhaps he needs to seriously consider whether the single health board model for the north of Wales is fit for purpose?
Doctors and nurses and other medical professionals are working in an impossible situation because there are too many people tied up in the system, people not flowing through the health system as they should, which leads to unacceptable waiting times for patients who are really in need and are often in pain.
The loss of community beds means patients have to stay in Ysbyty Gwynedd far longer than they have too.
That clogs up the system, leading to cancelled operations and long ambulance wait times.
Problems in dentistry have arisen again in the past few days, too, with the announcement of the closure of a Menai Bridge surgery.
Our NHS is packed with committed and talented staff. They need more Government support and a change of direction so they can do the work they were trained to do in a sustainable environment.