Another target missed: number of patients waiting for treatment still rising in Labour-run Wales

Commenting on the latest NHS statistics for Wales, Russell George MS, Welsh Conservative Shadow Health Minister said:

“These latest statistics are further evidence of Labour’s gross mismanagement of our Welsh NHS.

“When Labour should be tackling waiting lists and fixing our broken NHS, they are spending precious resources on more politicians in Cardiff Bay. They have missed yet another target.

“It’s time for Labour to stop under-resourcing our Welsh NHS to pay for their pet projects and spend the full Barnett consequential uplift for health on health, where the money is needed.

Two-year waits still stand at 24,248 in Wales, compared with only 282 in England. The Labour Health Minister promised to eliminate these waits by March 2023, but failed to meet this target.
More recently, the Labour Health Minister set a target and promised to ensure that 97% of patient pathways were waiting less than two years by “the end of the calendar year” (December 2023), this target has also been missed.
The latest statistics for waiting times can be found here.
Link to the latest Welsh NHS performance summary can be found here.
The average (median) time patient pathways had been waiting for treatment at the end of December was 1.1 weeks higher than the previous month at 21.5 weeks.
48.8% of red (the most serious) calls received an emergency response within eight minutes in January. This was 0.1% lower than in December.
There were still 584,000 individual patients waiting for treatment in December, an increase of 2,000 patients compared with November. Nearly 1-in-5 of the population of Wales, compared with 1-in-9 in England.