Welsh NHS miss waiting lists targets ahead of Senedd election

NHS Wales failed to meet three key pre-election waiting times targets set by the Labour government, according to latest figures.

The targets included promises to cut waiting lists, eliminating waits of two years or more, and making sure nobody is waiting more than eight weeks for diagnostic tests.

The final set of NHS performance figures ahead of the Senedd election show that total number of referrals for treatment dropped for the ninth month in a row.

However, waiting lists remain far higher than the goal set out by Welsh health minister Jeremy Miles of figures falling to around 600,000 by the spring.

Provisional figures for March show there were still around 666,700 people waiting - of those, 2,600 were waiting more than two years, despite a pledge to eliminate two-year waits.

Likewise, the target of eliminating waits of longer than eight weeks for diagnostics was missed, as there were just under 38,500 waiting this long in February - provisional data for March on this particular subset of data is not published.

The figures published by Stats Wales do, however, show a number of improvements, and the total numbers waiting for treatment now stand at their lowest since December 2021, but it still equates to around 543,400 individuals - as each person may be on more than one referral list.

Those waiting longer than 36 weeks is also the lowest it has been since September 2020.

As work is done to reduce the time patients are waiting, it has meant there are a larger number of patients waiting a shorter period of time.

So we see that the number of pathways or referrals waiting less than 26 weeks is now the highest since May 2020.

Performance against the cancer target remained unchanged in February, with 57% of patients starting their treatment within 62 days of the suspicion of cancer.

Figures for emergency care are also mixed, with the target response time for ambulances reaching purple and red category calls - the most urgent - not met.

While there was a higher average daily attendance at A&E during March, the performance against the four-hour waits improved, but deteriorated for the 12-hour waits.

The average time spent in emergency departments was also longer in March compared to February.

One of the key factors which has contributed to delays across NHS Wales is the number of patients who remain in hospital, despite being medically well enough to be discharged.

Those numbers have been gradually falling and in March there were just under 1,400 "pathway of care delays", which was a drop compared to the figure in February.

Commenting on the latest NHS waiting times, Welsh Labour leader Eluned Morgan said that waiting lists falling nine months in a row was "the biggest sustained drop on record".

She said the average wait for treatment was now 16.7 weeks, down from 23 weeks when she became first minister, adding: "That's real progress."

Plaid Cymru spokesperson for health and social care Mabon ap Gwynfor said the party pledged to deliver 10 new surgical hubs, specialising in treatments with the highest waits.

Peter Fox, Welsh Conservative spokesperson for health and social care, said they would declare a "health emergency" to increase the number of beds in hospitals and create a Cancer Treatments Fund for "innovative, life-saving treatments for cancer".

Reform UK said it would "put resources wasted on bureaucrats back into primary care, properly workforce plan to end our reliance on costly agency staff, restore the NHS estate and hold failing managers to account".

The Greens said the figures show a "system stuck in crisis". The party pledges to shift into prevention and early treatment, to ease the pressure on hospitals in the longer term.

Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats Jane Dodds said they were prepared to "raise income tax by 1p in the pound for a time to rescue social care, free up hospital beds and get the NHS moving again".