00:00Forcing patients to travel huge distances to Haverford West and Llanelli, which is a round trip of 200 miles or more, especially on a poor transport infrastructure, is totally unacceptable.
00:14Now, back in 2014, the Mid Wales Health Study by Professor Marcus Longley and others recommended that unnecessary journeys to access care should be eliminated with a coordinated and comprehensive examination of relevant pathways
00:29to ensure care is actually provided closer to home.
00:33Indeed, I know from bitter experience when services have been taken away from Withybush Hospital, just how difficult it is for patients to access services elsewhere.
00:43And to centralise these stroke services away from Bronglis Hospital, when the unit has been declared the best out of all the stroke units in the Huwildar Health Board area, does not make any sense whatsoever.
00:55If patients are transferred to Haverford West and Llanelli, then it's impossible for family and friends to visit.
01:03And as we know, family and friends play a key role in the rehabilitation of stroke patients.
01:09And crucially, the Health Board's proposals are not supported by the Stroke Association, which is the voice of stroke patients.
01:17There are two ways to view the Bronglis Hospital. One is from the viewpoint of a finance officer.
01:24On paper, Bronglis is a nuisance and placing stroke services in the south of the region may seem efficient.
01:31But with an established specialist service already nearby in Morriston, it makes no practical sense.
01:37The other way to view Bronglis is from the viewpoint not of the finance officer, but of the patient.
01:44Viewed from this end of the prison, Bronglis is a solution to many of our health problems.
01:49Indeed, it's a lifesaver.
01:52If boards worked together across Huwildar, Swansea Bay, Betty Codwalader and Powys,
01:57they would see that Bronglis is the hospital best placed to serve as a regional centre of excellence.
02:04Bronglis should be viewed as a solution, not a problem.
02:07And we know that once services are removed, they never return.
02:12And in a rural area like ours, that just doesn't weaken one hospital.
02:17It weakens the whole network of care that people rely on.
02:22We know that as people lose confidence that in this case services from Bronglis may move,
02:29then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
02:32The fewer people who go to that service, the more the service is denuded and therefore becomes unviable.
02:43We need services at Bronglis Hospital to be protected and strengthened and not downgraded.
02:51The proposals to remove stroke recovery services are totally, totally unacceptable and they are proposals.
03:02Cabinet Secretary, they are proposals.
03:05When I raised this with the Cabinet Secretary earlier this month, he said these are not proposals.
03:10They are proposals.
03:11We know that they are proposals.
03:14The Cabinet Secretary himself, actually, just two weeks earlier, wrote to the chair of the petitions committee and guess what he referred to them as?
03:23Proposals.
03:24The Cabinet Secretary even suggested that by me calling the proposals, I was causing people anxiety.
03:31It's not me calling these proposals, proposals, that's causing the anxiety.
03:37It's the proposals themselves which are causing people across vast areas of Mid Wales anxiety.
03:44So with Howell Valley University Health Board has put forward a series of proposals for consultation to change how stroke services are provided across West Wales.
03:53It's the latest health board to consider how it can improve stroke services and, crucially, how it can improve outcomes.
04:02In publishing the proposals for consultation, it has acknowledged its current services fall short of clinical standards, lack seven-day specialist cover and face staffing challenges.
04:16This leads to inconsistency and variation in service quality and, crucially, in outcomes.
04:27The services in their current configuration are not providing the best outcomes for patients, despite the efforts of NHS staff, and they are not sustainable.
04:46So thank you for needing so much to have a chance to do that.
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