6,324 cancelled operations at Prince Philip Hospital Helen Mary Jones reveals

Plaid Cymru Llanelli candidate Helen Mary Jones has warned that the Labour government’s failure to properly plan and manage the health service is letting down patients in Llanelli badly, after she revealed figures that showed that 6,324 operations were cancelled at Prince Philip Hospital over the last two-and- a-half years.

Helen Mary Jones said that across Wales there were more than 6,600 cancellations because ward beds were not available, more than 16,000 as a result of clinical staff being unavailable and over 2,700 were called off because equipment was not available.

Helen Mary Jones, Plaid Cymru Assembly candidate for Llanelli AM said:
“Under this Labour government waiting times have spiralled out of control and patients are missing out. Cancelled appointment spell distress an frustration for patients, and they should be an absolute last case scenario.

“Operations get cancelled because of a lack of beds, a lack of clinical staff and a lack of equipment. Clearly, this is down to a lack of strategic management by the Labour government. People will find it difficult to understand how thousands of operations have been cancelled for reasons such as equipment or medical staff being unavailable, some of whom were on annual leave.

“That’s why we need a long-term plan for your health service. Plaid Cymru has already set out our plans to increase capacity in the service by training and recruiting a thousand extra doctors and 500 nurses across Wales – that’s 25 doctors and 125 nurses in Llanelli.

“The staff of our NHS do a great job, often in difficult circumstances, and the health service is rightly highly valued by the public. But there is clearly need to ensure that within hospitals much more is done to reduce the unnecessary cancellation of operations to a minimum.”