Powys Treatment Delays
The waiting time scandal exposed at the end of last year showed the precarious financial state that NHS Wales currently finds itself in. The fact that Powys Health Board were forced to extend referral to treatment times because of budgetary pressures, is an absolute disgrace and is wholly down to Welsh Government making swingeing cuts to core funding being provided to health boards.
Obviously I welcomed the Minister’s U-turn a day later when she allocated £4m for Powys Health Board due to the fact that frontline services were being hit and patients were suffering.
However, lurching messily from one bailout to the next is not giving frontline staff the confidence they need to deliver first class services, nor is it giving patients confidence that they are going to be treated appropriately and on time.
Health boards like Powys, must be sufficiently funded at the start of the financial year to allow them to plan and commission services properly for the needs of the population.
Clinical Services Review at Hywel Dda
This week Hywel Dda Health Board announced it was to press ahead with plans to make radical changes in the way NHS care is delivered across Mid and West Wales and I felt the impact for Mid Wales was certainly far better than we feared some 12 months ago.
Bronglais Hospital is and continues to be, a vital NHS facility that is of enormous importance to the residents of Mid Wales. Therefore, I am pleased that the Board, having listened to local public concerns, has recognised the strategic significance of the hospital and will be ensuring that a 24/7 Accident and Emergency service remains at the hospital.
There are still question marks over some surgical and mental health services delivered from the hospital and I will need to look at those particular decisions in more detail. However, patients in Montgomeryshire will still be served by this important District General Hospital and long may that continue.
Dementia and Social Care
I thought my colleague, Glyn Davies MP, made an excellent contribution last week to what was a very emotive debate on dementia services in the House of Commons.
Glyn rightful pointed out that Wales has one of the worst diagnosis rates of dementia anywhere in the UK. The diagnosis rate in Wales is 38.5%, compared to an overall UK figure of 46%; and in Scotland the rate is 65%. There are more than 43,000 people who have been confirmed with dementia in Wales but the Alzheimer’s Society believes there are another 27,000 who have not been diagnosed. There are literally tens of thousand of people missing out on the effective support and treatment they need because their condition is not being identified early enough.
That is not to say that good work is not being done on dementia care in Powys. I have been fortunate like Glyn, to visit the Memory Café in Newtown. I went to the Methodist Church where this super initiative is based just before Christmas. The café provides a place where any member of the public who feel they or a person they know who may have a short-term memory problem, can drop in without an appointment and talk to an experienced volunteer or a member of the health team. It’s initiatives like these that real make a difference on the ground and I would like to commend the Alzheimer’s Society for making the project such a success.
Kidney Dialysis
To be fair to the Welsh Government, where it has made a difference for local health services was through the opening of the new renal dialysis unit at the Victoria Memorial Hospital in Welshpool. It was the in fact the former health minister, Edwina Hart AM that was instrumental in giving the go-ahead for the unit to be built. However, it was the tireless efforts of the late Trudy Banes Hill who made what for many was a distant dream, into a reality and it was such a shame that she didn’t live long enough to see the unit open.
The unit at has room for 12 patients and it allow those requiring treatment in Powys to be treated closer to home rather than travelling long distances to Shrewsbury, Shropshire and Wrexham for treatment. While it has been a long wait, for the 16 patients that are currently receiving dialysis three times a week in Welshpool, this new facility will transform their lives and the lives of their families.