Extra £1.1bn invested in Welsh NHS – Deputy Health Minister reveals

More than £1.1bn in additional investment has been made in NHS Wales by the Welsh Government over the last two years, Deputy Health Minister Vaughan Gething today confirmed.

Speaking ahead of a debate on NHS performance in the National Assembly today, the Deputy Minister said that despite an increase in demand for NHS services, people in Wales are being treated faster and living longer with help from the care they receive from the Welsh NHS.

The Welsh Government has invested an extra £1.1bn in capital and revenue in the NHS over the last two years. In revenue alone, the health budget has increased by more than 9% since 2013-14, which is equivalent to an extra £178 being spent on health for every person in Wales.

The health budget in Wales is now the largest it has ever been and accounts for 46% of the Welsh Government’s total annual budget.

The Deputy Health Minister today said the Welsh Government will continue to invest in the NHS and work with health boards and NHS trusts to drive up standards and improve outcomes for patients.

He also outlined how the NHS in Wales is performing better now than at any time since devolution:

• In 1999, more than 2,500 people were waiting more than a year-and-a-half for an outpatient appointment
• In July 2015, the average wait for a diagnostic test is four weeks. Since January 2014, there has been a 44% reduction in the number of people waiting more than eight weeks for a diagnostic test, with 78% of people waiting less than eight weeks
• The standard wait for treatment at the end of July 2015 is 10 weeks. This means more than half of the patients who were referred for treatment at Easter this year started treatment by the end of June
• The waiting list has grown by a fifth in Wales but it has grown by a quarter in England.

Since 1999, demand for NHS services has increased, as has the number of people seen and treated in Wales:

• There has been a 20% increase in the number of inpatient/day cases
• There has been a 16.8% increase in A&E attendances. Almost one million people are seen in A&E departments in Wales every year – more than 80,000 every month. The majority of people are seen and treated within four hours, with half spending less than two hours in the emergency department
• 650,000 more people are being seen in outpatients every year
• Long waits for cardiac surgery have been eradicated in Wales.

The number of people being referred for treatment for cancer has trebled between 2006 and 2014, from around 2,000 a month to more than 6,000, while a record number of patients are surviving the disease.

Performance against the 31 and 62-day waiting time targets has also improved significantly over the last decade – in June 2006, performance was 70% against the 62-day target and 90% for the 31-day target; in July 2015 performance was 87.2% and 97.7% respectively, even though more people were being seen.

Vaughan Gething said:

“In recent years, we have seen significant extra demand being placed on our health service. In response, we are investing record amounts in the Welsh NHS, with £6.7bn being spent this year. In the last two years alone, we’ve invested an extra £1bn in the Welsh NHS, despite the £1.4bn which has been slashed from the overall Welsh budget by the UK Government since 2011.

“For a population of three million, our Welsh NHS deals with 18 million contacts in primary care every year; four million outpatients appointments; a million A&E attendances; 750,000 hospital admissions – of which 400,000 are emergencies – and more than 500,000 ambulance calls each year.

“Over the course of the last 17 years, the Welsh NHS is seeing more people than ever before; it is referring more people to hospital-based services; it is providing faster access to diagnostic services and it is providing faster, more effective care, using the most advanced treatments available.

“Performance in some areas is still not at the level we would like it to be in all areas but improvements have and continue to be made. I am determined to ensure performance continues to improve across the NHS.”