Tories hit out at Welsh Government over reduction in hospital beds

Emily Price

The Welsh Conservatives have criticised the Welsh Government for allowing a reduction in the number of NHS beds in Wales.

Stats Wales figures show that the average number of daily available beds in the Welsh NHS has dropped from 14,723 to 10,446 since Labour came to power in the Senedd in 1999.

The average percentage occupancies have also risen.

The Welsh Government says the reduction in beds is due to improvements in the way care is delivered.

The Conservatives argue that having less beds available is a large part of the reason for rising NHS waiting times in Wales and pressures facing A&E departments that have led to ambulances queueing outside hospitals.

Incident

The Welsh Ambulance Service was forced declare a critical incident over the festive period when more than 340 emergency 999 calls were left waiting to be answered.

Shocking footage released by the Tory Senedd group last week showed a sea of ambulances outside The Grange Hospital in Cwmbran that were unable to offload patients.

The video had been taken whilst shadow cabinet secretary for health, James Evans, spent a 12 hour shift with ambulance crews.

The Conservative MS said the vehicles were being used as an “extension of the A&E waiting room” whilst paramedics were “acting as porters” ferrying patients to relevant departments.

Flu

Nearly one in 10 people currently in hospital are suffering from an acute respiratory virus due to an early flu peak period coupled with an increase in Covid-19 infections.

Hundreds of people attending hospital in the last week were screened for flu regardless of their symptoms.

30 per cent were positive for flu – three times as many as this time last year.

Cabinet secretary for health Jeremy Miles says the increase in respiratory viruses were having a knock-on consequence on NHS sickness absence rates and on demand for all NHS services.

‘Collapse’

The Welsh Conservatives say the Welsh Government have allowed hospital bed capacity to “collapse” despite increasing demand.

James Evans said: “Of course we also need to see better patient flow through our hospitals particularly through better support for our social care sector, but we haven’t got a plan on this front from Labour either.

“We need both more hospital capacity and better patient flow to fix this problem and reduce handover delays so that we see fewer ambulances parked outside of hospitals and better outcomes for patients across Wales.”

In the Senedd on Tuesday, the Tory group quizzed the First Minister on the pressures facing Wales’ A&E departments.

‘Unfiltered’

Eluned Morgan recently visited six Welsh hospitals unannounced because she wanted to see the “raw, unfiltered” reality of what other people experience.

She argued that the situation facing Wales’ NHS is due to a lack of patient flow through hospitals.

Speaking in the Chamber, the FM said: “The key issue here is there are lots of people in hospital today who have been clinically optimised, they’ve been sorted out and they need to go home.”

Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Darren Millar says the Welsh Government is “incapable of maintaining adequate NHS capacity” amid winter pressures.

He said: “Labour has failed to build the hospitals that they promised and that Wales needs. The people of Rhyl have been waiting for a community hospital for over a decade and west Wales is not going to get their new hospital until at least 2039.

“Labour has broken the system. The Welsh Conservatives will fix it.”

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “Through advances in healthcare provision, the overall need for overnight hospital beds has reduced over time, with more surgery being carried out on a day case basis.

“There have also been improvements in the way urgent and emergency care is delivered, with more people being supported at home or in their local community through the use of virtual wards.”