Further to the finding that 1 in 5 people in Wales are on NHS treatment waiting list and ambulances taking hours to respond, will the Minister confirm why the Welsh Government has not published an action plan for how it proposes to tackle this crisis?
In March 2021, we published Health and Social Care in Wales COVID 19: Looking Forward, which set out our ambitious but realistic approach to building back our health and care system in Wales.
This has been supported with investment of nearly £250 million this year to help health boards recover from the effects of the pandemic and to address the backlog of patients waiting that has built up over the last 24 months. This has been used by health boards to improve capacity locally, as well as to outsource patients to alternative providers, use insourcing providers and use their own staff in alternative facilities. Health boards have also been transforming the way services are delivered, building on some of the actions that were put in place at the start of the pandemic.
We are also investing £170 million recurrently from next financial year specifically for planned care and will be publishing a planned care recovery plan in April 2022.
The Emergency Ambulance Services Committee is working with the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust and health boards to deliver a range of immediate and sustainable actions to support improvement. These are focused on better management of 999 demand in the community, increased capacity, responsiveness to people with time-sensitive complaints and ambulance patient handover.
Following additional Welsh Government investment of £5m, an extra 127 frontline ambulance staff will be available over the coming months with all in post by the end of April. Thirty-six additional posts have been identified for immediate recruitment to support a major enhancement of the clinical support desk.
This additional staffing capacity will provide advice over the telephone, supporting people to access the right care, in the right place, first time.
The Welsh Ambulance Service is also working with a range of national agencies and partners, including the military and fire and rescue services to supplement existing capacity and improve responsiveness to calls in the community.
An additional 150 military personnel have been supporting the ambulance service with ambulance driving, which brings the total number of personnel supporting the trust to 251 until the end of March 2022.
The ambulance service has also contracted additional support from St John Ambulance Cymru to respond to calls involving people who have fallen and non-serious calls. This will help prioritise ambulance service resources towards calls to which only paramedics can attend, such as immediately life-threatening and time-sensitive conditions.