Questions raised over details of cross border NHS plan

Emily Price

Questions have been raised about the details of a cross-border collaboration to help reduce NHS waiting lists in Wales and England.

Plans for the new partnership to tackle backlogs were revealed at the Labour Party conference last month.

On Tuesday (October 15) Eluned Morgan said her opponents and the media had misrepresented the policy, saying people had been “putting words into our mouth in terms of what the relationship is and what it was that we announced”.

Opposition politicians pushed for details of how the arrangement will work after the Health Secretary Jeremy Miles appeared to rule out giving Welsh patients the option to travel to England.

A spokesperson for the Welsh Government told Nation.Cymru the scheme wouldn’t allow a patient to choose the location of their care – but would involve English trusts and Welsh health boards working together to identify where this is capacity.

Plaid Cymru Leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said that three key players on the border – Gloucestershire NHS trust, Herefordshire and Worcestershire NHS trust, and Powys Teaching Health Board – had all confirmed via freedom of information requests that they have received no correspondence from either government.

‘No idea’

Mr ap Iorwerth said: “The problem is that we have absolutely no idea what is actually being proposed.

“Despite her promise of mutual aid partnerships between NHS trusts in England and health boards in Wales, the Welsh Government’s cabinet secretary for health has ruled out giving Welsh patients the option to travel to England for more treatments.

“Between them, Labour in Wales and in Westminster have come up with a word soup which is just a distraction from their failure and even lack of a real plan to bring down waiting lists.”

He accused the First Minister of making up the policy “as she goes along”.

‘Projecting’

Baroness Morgan said: “I honestly think that you have all, as well as the media, been projecting things on to what this relationship is all about.

“The fact is that it is all about practical, common-sense steps, and that’s what we’re doing.

“We’ve brought in these experts, who are telling us what works well in the NHS in England, and they’ll be working with the experts from Wales.

“Let’s be clear, supporting each other is something that already happens.”

NHS Wales waiting lists for hospital treatment hit a record high this year with over 760,000 patient pathways and over 20,000 people waiting more than two years for treatment.

More than a quarter of the two-year waits in Wales are for orthopaedic surgery.

England has managed to almost eradicate these waits but Wales includes more referrals in its statistics than England does meaning the figures aren’t completely comparable.

Wales’ population is also older, poorer and sicker than in England – meaning there is an increased demand for care leading to an extra burden on the health service.

In the Chamber today, Baroness Morgan said, “there’s not that much capacity in England either at the moment”.

Mutual aid

When the scheme was revealed, Labour said there would be “opportunities to explore more cross-border collaboration”, including developing mutual aid partnerships, which would enable NHS Trusts to support each other as capacity becomes available.

The First Minister said Plaid’s leader should “read what we’ve actually said rather than making things up”.

She said people from Bristol already travel to Wales, including for treatment for cleft palates, as well as plastic surgery.

Baroness Morgan said there were a range of areas where the NHS in England was keen to learn from Wales, pointing to GPs, which she said have “much better performance than they do in England”.