Number of people waiting over a year for surgery up 400 per cent in Wales

After it emerged that the number of people waiting over 12 months for an operation in Wales has risen by over 400 per cent in the past four years, the Labour-led Welsh government’s management of the health service has attracted fresh criticism.

A freedom of information request by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) revealed the number of people waiting over 52 weeks for surgery in the year ending March 2017 was 3,605. In March 2013, the figure was 699. The number of people waiting more than a year for treatment in England, which has more than 17 times the population of Wales, was 1,302.

The Welsh government said the majority of patients were treated within target time despite increased demand on the NHS It said the over the past five years refers to hospital-based services had increased by about 20 per cent.

Tim Harvard, regional director of Wales at the RCS and a consultant general surgeon, said: “Long waits for surgery can be traumatising for patients and their families. In some cases patients will be in extreme pain or immobile, possibly unable to work or carry out daily tasks. A patient’s condition can also deteriorate the longer they are made to wait for treatment, meaning the eventual outcomes are not as good as they could have been.

“NHS Wales and the government must give renewed focus to policies that will help decrease waiting times. In particular, we’d like to see better provision of out-of-hospital services and more protection of beds used for planned surgery.”

Angela Burns, shadow health secretary, said: “No one should have to wait more than a year for surgery, but that’s becoming a painful reality for more and more NHS patients in Wales. The longer patients are allowed to languish on waiting lists, the more complex their needs become, and the more expensive their treatment is to minister.”