North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has urged the Welsh Government to act on the calls set out in a petition submitted by RCN Wales and BMA Wales to deliver a clear, costed workforce plan to ensure hospitals and wider care settings can meet future demand.
Speaking in today’s Senedd Debate on the Petition to End Corridor Care in Wales, which received 10,536 signatures, Mr Isherwood highlighted the impact of the cuts in hospital beds on this, outlined problems in North Wales, and called for Ministers to listen and respond to the Petition calls.
He said:
“19 years ago, I launched CHANT Cymru at the request of campaigners throughout Wales - fighting for local beds at Local Community Hospitals.
“Typically, the Welsh Government dismissed the Campaign’s warnings that even if the proportion of people needing Hospital Beds fell, age and complexity meant that the absolute number would not.
“Answering me three weeks ago, this First Minister again recycled their argument that, ‘People generally … would rather be looked after in their own homes…. that is the shift that we would like to see. So, supporting people in their own communities, in their own homes, is actually a very deliberate approach by this Government’.
“Her predecessors were saying the same thing two decades ago, yet here we now are, living with the avoidable consequences.
“Between 2009 and 2019, the number of community hospital beds fell from one bed per 233 people to one per 315, with further reductions since.”
He added:
“Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) has the highest delayed discharge figures in Wales, patients who are medically fit to leave hospital but cannot do so because the necessary support is unavailable.
“This blocks beds for acutely ill patients, leaving ambulances queuing outside and patients waiting in corridors - sometimes for more than 24 hours.
“According to the Royal College of Nursing, this should be a ‘never event’.
“BCUHB has received the highest number of Coroner preventable death reports in Wales. These statistics represent real lives and families.
“The Health Board states that improving urgent and emergency care is its top operational priority.
“Although the Health Secretary has recently deployed a Performance Management Team, their room for manoeuvre on admissions will be very limited without available beds.
“As we have already seen, the new drop and go ambulance policy will merely worsen the congestion in packed A&E departments.
“A Group of retired North Wales Clinicians have now warned of a winter crisis in our Accident and Emergency Departments.
“Their practical, cost effective BEDS campaign proposes to Bring back community beds, End corridor tragedies, Decrease mortality and locate Senior medics at the front door.
“I urge the Welsh Government again to meet with them.
“The Petition also calls for the proportion of NHS Wales funding in General Practice to be restored to historic levels.
“As NHS staff and GP’s have told me ‘extra investment in our local community hospitals and NHS community beds would take pressure off our General Hospitals, add to the breadth of things GPs can do, help tackle the A&E crisis and enable the Health Board to use its resources more efficiently’.
“This Petition therefore rightly calls for the Welsh Government to immediately ‘pause reductions in NHS Wales hospital beds, nationally review capacity, and deliver a clear, costed workforce plan to ensure hospitals and wider care settings can meet future demand’.
