£60m boost for recovery plan

The plan would see no-one waiting more than a year for treatment by spring 2025. Targets include 35% of new appointments and 50% of follow-ups delivered virtually, freeing up clinicians’ time to allow them to treat more patients.

Plans also include performing more diagnostic tests closer to patients’ homes. Details for two new diagnostic centres will be developed this year with more to follow. As outlined in Covid-19: looking forward, which was published in March 2021, diagnostic service recovery required significant funding and substantial short-term capacity to avoid further growth in backlogs. A plan to lease staffed scanners, together with the necessary reporting capacity, will be taken forward. Funded and staffed treatment options in primary and community settings will be provided as part of a whole-system approach to personalised care, the latest plan added.

The document, Our programme for transforming and modernising planned care and reducing waiting lists in Wales, said prioritisation would aim to minimise health inequalities, as well as addressing long waiting times.

Patients waiting for treatment will be supported by a new website that will provide information on managing their condition and help them prepare for their treatment.

Maximise funding

Ms Morgan (pictured) said funding for NHS recovery had reached £1bn, though she acknowledged the service faced a big task. The plan aimed to maximise how recovery funding is spent.

‘Reducing waiting times will require new solutions, more equipment, new facilities and more staff to help diagnose people quickly as part of an effective and efficient planned care service. This plan sets out how we will transform planned care so the most urgent cases are prioritised,' she said.

‘Unfortunately waiting times and waiting lists have grown during the pandemic and will take a long time and a lot of hard work to do but we are committed to working with our fantastic NHS to ensure no one waits longer than a year for treatment in most specialities by spring 2025.

‘Together with reducing waiting times, we also want to help people understand and manage their conditions and to feel supported while they are waiting for treatment.'

Welsh NHS Confederation director Darren Hughes said the local health service needed financial sustainability.

‘It’s vital we think about future patients and the sustainability of health and care services in Wales. The NHS needs long-term financial stability, including capital investment in NHS estates and digital infrastructure, and further workforce investment to be able to strive for a sustainable service in the long term. Social care also has an enormous part to play in community wellness – keeping people well at home and preventing health issue escalation can reduce hospital visits – so growing and maintaining a sustainable social care workforce is essential to achieving these goals.’

The targets were ambitious, but the service would do its best to achieve them, he added. Innovations that emerged during the pandemic must be embedded into health and care systems sustainably to support communities in the short- and long-term.

‘Unfortunately, due to the scale of the backlog and the anticipated number of people still to come forward for care, we’re likely to continue to see this exceptionally high level of demand across healthcare services for many months before it levels off,’ he said.