North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has lambasted the Welsh Government this week for failing patients in North Wales.
Responding to yesterday’s Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services ‘Update on Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board’, Mr Isherwood expressed concern that despite being in special measures for three years, and therefore under direct Welsh Government control, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) is still failing to meet waiting time targets and patients are not receiving the support they need.
He also criticised the Welsh Government for dismissing concerns raised by North Wales Community Health Council regarding the Tawel Fan HASCAS report (Tawel Fan ward, an older people’s mental health ward in the Ablett Unit at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, was closed in December 2013 following concerns being raised about the quality and safety of care provided on the ward).
Speaking in the Chamber he said:
“Why do you believe that those waiting for more than four hours in A&E has shown a deterioration of 3 per cent over the last two years to what remains, sadly, the worst performing of all Local Health Boards? You referred to management of complaints and concerns. How do you respond to concern not only evidentially from my casework, but from constituents, that we've seen a reversion to risk aversion and legalistic responses when, at the beginning of special measures, there was a positive move towards building bridges with constituents, with patients and ourselves, with round-table meetings to see if we could agree ways forward or resolutions to problems? You refer to the integrated health and social care centres at Flint, Blaenau Ffestiniog and Tywyn Memorial Hospital, and of course in most cases these replaced community hospitals with beds.
“When will your Government accept that the consequence of stripping out those community beds has put extra pressure on hospitals, our district general hospitals, on our GP practices, and has actually led not to enhanced care in the community, but to enhanced suffering in the community for too many when they can't get the support they previously called for?”
He added: “You refer to the Tawel Fan HASCAS report, which Darren of course referred to earlier. In accepting that report, why have you apparently dismissed the concerns expressed by North Wales Community Health Council that most of the families they've spoken to over recent months and years have still not received clear answers to their questions and concerns? Why have you accepted the conclusion that care was good and that institutional abuse didn't happen, when that's directly contradicted by Donna Ockenden's 2015 report, the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales report in July 2013, internal work on Dementia Care Mapping in October 2013 and many other evidenced reports that previously had been accepted?
“I'll conclude by asking what action you propose to take to ensure that the Health Board works better with third sector providers, who are delivering a wide range of services, but despite engagement, some of which I facilitated with some of those bodies, years later we're still waiting for new arrangements to go into place to ensure that proper commissioned services, which don't replicate or duplicate but enhance the experience for patients, are finally put in place.
Mr Isherwood added: “For Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board to remain in special measures and under direct Welsh Government control after 3 years raises serious questions about the type of leadership and support provided by the Welsh Government to the Health Board. Both the patients and the hard working staff deserved better.
“For example, it is several years since NHS providers just across the border in England told me that services they had always provided to people from North Wales were being repatriated to hospitals in North Wales which could not cope. Last Autumn, BCUHB again stated its intention to transfer additional patients to Trusts in England (880 additional patients), in order to clear the backlog of patients experiencing unacceptable waits, mainly in trauma and orthopaedics. Yet a letter I received from BCUHB on 30th May states “the waiting list currently stands at over 105 weeks for elective orthopaedic surgery”.