What assessment has the Minister made of reports that 495 people have died at Swansea Bay University Health Board while on a waiting list for more than two years?
I believe this figure comes from a Freedom of Information request from WalesOnline as part of their article in January 2023 looking at waits and deaths over a 6-year period from 2016. As was quoted in the report, it is important not to infer causal links between deaths and waiting lists. Patients could be waiting for a range of treatments, including routine surgery, and their deaths may be completely unrelated.
I have asked my officials to work with Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) and Local Health Boards to explore if it is possible to determine how many people die annually while on NHS waiting lists. We expect Health Boards should be using their own quality governance arrangements to explore their local data as part of their commitment to learn and improve.
For context, an average of around 4,500 deaths were registered each year in the Swansea Bay University Health Board over the most recent four years for which data are available.