The Welsh Government has announced a funding of £50 million to reduce waiting times for elective procedures to continue the good progress achieved in the last three years.
The Government has invested £150 million since 2016 to reduce the waiting times, and this has delivered some of the most successful outcomes in 6 years. Three Welsh health boards had no patient waiting >36 weeks for treatment.
Some key outcomes at the end of March 2019 were as follows:
- The number of individuals waiting >26 weeks was the best position since July 2013.
- The number of individuals waiting >36 weeks was the best position since May 2013.
- The number of individuals waiting >14 weeks was 98% lower than March 2018 and the best position reported till now.
The allocation of the funding will be done as follows:
- £1 million to support the implementation of Quality and Delivery Frameworks for Emergency Departments at several ‘early adopter’ sites.
- £750,000 for extension of the Emergency Department Well-being and Home Safe and Hospital to Healthier Homes pilots.
- £3.5 million to health boards for improving the management of follow-up patients through the Planned Care Programme team.
- The rest of the amount will be distributed among individual health boards to decrease the number of long waiting patients and develop sustainable services.
Vaughan Gething, The Welsh Health Minister, said: "Health boards will need to meet the targets they set out in order to receive the full funding. I expect to see significant improvements on waiting times as we have in the last 3 years."
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