Make health system work for all ofWales

THE Welsh Ambulance Quality Indicators, which assess all aspects of performance, clinical care and hand-over delays, has published its 2016 findings.

The study has found that the delays of A&E handovers totalled the equivalent of 2,487 days in 2016 despite NHS policy that this care exchange between the ambulance crew and medical staff should be 15 minutes.

Ambulances queuing to offload patients and return to duty are a familiar sight. Reasons given for this situation are a lack of beds, higher numbers of elderly patients, more chronic cases and lack of social care for bed-blockers to return home.

While this situation has been building where was the Cabinet Secretary for Health Vaughan Gething?

He was involved in the so-called Primary Care Hub, using computerbased software, based in the Neath/ Skewen area, and its aim is to ensure patients are directed to the appropriate healthcare professional.

The system works by linking appointment systems and is supposed to reduce the amount of paperwork undertaken by doctors, but any competent GP can triage patients and direct them to the correct speciality without the time and expense of a new computer system.

As the Welsh NHS is in a state of collapse due, of course, to the consistent underfunding by the

Assembly, perhaps Mr Gething would be better employed in making the system work for all of Wales, but perhaps that would be too much like work for him. K Clements Llangyfelach, Swansea