Minister for Health and Social Services, Eluned Morgan said:
“Every day our heroic NHS staff provide a quality service under
record levels of demand.
“I’m pleased to see that despite increasing high levels of demand
for our cancer services, performance against the cancer target
has increased this month to 56 per cent, alongside a record
number of people being told they did not have cancer in October.
“Nearly 2,000 people started treatment for cancer this month, an
increase of 8 per cent compared to the same month last year and
the second highest figure on record.
“We have placed a clear focus on tackling both those patients
with an urgent need and those that have waited the longest. We
have continued to see the number of patients waiting over two
years fall – down by 64 per cent since its peak.
“I previously tasked health boards with ensuring 97 per cent of
those waiting at the end of December 2023 will be waiting less
than 104 weeks. We were extremely close to achieving that in
October (96.6 per cent) with four health boards already having
achieved that target.
“Over the last 3 years we have reduced the average wait time for
planned care patients by a third, with the median wait now stable
at around 20 weeks.
“Demand for emergency care services remains significant, with the
ambulance service now dealing with around 80 per cent more red
calls daily than they did before the pandemic. The average number
of daily red calls made in October was the third highest on
record.
“Despite this, 75 per cent of these calls received a response
within 13 minutes. And we saw an increase from last month in the
proportion of red calls being responded to within the 8 minute
target.
“People are also being seen quicker when they arrive at emergency
departments with the average time to triage from arrival down to
18 minutes, the lowest it has been since March 2021. Performance
also improved against the four-hour target and the twelve hour
target for emergency departments.
“We have built on learning from last winter and put in place a
number of measures to increase our resilience this year. These
include 119 more ambulance staff than last year, and more staff
available to respond to calls to the NHS 111 Wales service –
which continues to help tens of thousands of people to receive
urgent health advice, both online and over the telephone, 24
hours a day seven days a week.
“Thousands of people a month are also accessing care in the
community and away from Emergency Departments, at Urgent Primary
Care Centres and Same Day Emergency Care Services. The number of
people accessing consultations for common ailments via community
pharmacy teams has also increased fivefold.
"It’s disappointing to see overall waiting lists reaching their
highest levels on record. That is due to the number of people
joining the waiting lists. But over the last 12 months waiting
lists in Wales have only increased by 1 per cent compared to 7
per cent in England.”
Notes to editors
The Single Suspected Cancer Pathway target is for 75 per cent of
patients to start treatment within 62 days of cancer being
suspected.
