00:00What is the First Minister doing to improve access to healthcare in Brecon and Radnorshire?
00:05Health boards are responsible for the planning and delivery of safe, high-quality healthcare
00:09services on behalf of their local populations within the resources available.
00:14Powys Teaching Health Board has set out its position, and I expect any service change
00:19to be informed by continuous stakeholder engagement.
00:23Thank you, First Minister.
00:24With the number of people waiting for appointments across Wales, especially for operations, they
00:28have a system in England where, if you've been waiting for a certain amount of time,
00:33they will offer you to go to other health boards across England to actually get that
00:37treatment done, especially in orthopaedics.
00:39In Hereford, for example, there's long waiting times for orthopaedic treatment, but they
00:43are sending patients to other hospitals across England to get waiting lists down and get
00:47people seen.
00:49After doing some research, the Welsh NHS doesn't offer this service to patients, so is this
00:54something that the Welsh NHS would look to do, to give patients who are waiting on those
00:58lists the opportunity to go to somewhere else in the system where there is capacity to get
01:03seen?
01:04Because I don't want to see patients in Wales, and especially in my constituency of Brecon
01:07and Radnorshire, subjected to a postcode lottery where they cannot get seen, where there may
01:11be spare capacity in the system elsewhere to get the treatment that they need.
01:15Yvonne Hamilton AMO Well, it's a shame that the research that
01:19you did didn't actually look at the latest statistics in terms of what already happens
01:24in relation to cross-border support and care.
01:27It's very interesting, particularly in relation to GPs on the border.
01:32There are 13,000 people in residence from Wales registered in England, but there are
01:4221,000 English residents registered in Wales.
01:45When you look at the number of people who are going into hospitals already in England,
01:501,700 just last year were involved in admission to an NHS English hospital.
01:56So, it is already happening, and we will continue to see if and when there is capacity, but
02:02at the moment we are focusing on making sure that we use the capacity that's available
02:07within our system and making sure that we expand the opportunities for that to happen
02:13with longer hours being used, for example, in Wales, rather than going across the border.
02:19Make sure we maximise and see an efficient system in Wales first.
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