Health Secretary Jeremy Miles today announced a £120m package to fund Wales’ ambitious plans to continue cutting waiting times and the waiting list this year.
The new funding will support the NHS to build on the progress made to date to reduce the longest waits for planned treatment.
The new Planned Care Recovery plan sets out our ambition to:
- Reduce the overall size of the waiting list by 200,000
- Eliminate all two-year waits
- Restore the diagnostic wait times to be reduced to under 8 weeks by March 2026.
Health Secretary Jeremy Miles said: “Tackling waiting times is our number one priority.
“We have seen long waiting times fall by two-thirds over the last four months. We will build on this progress and go further.
“This additional funding will help deliver what people want – faster access to treatment.”
The new funding will provide more outpatient appointments, more diagnostic tests and more treatments, including more than 20,000 cataract operations.
Alongside the new money, all health boards will be expected to make changes to how they provide services to increase productivity and efficiency and to reduce variation.
These requirements, which are known as enablers and are set out in the national planned care guidance include:
- Reducing the number of follow-up appointments which are automatically booked, instead allowing people to arrange them only if they need to see a doctor.
- Having a minimum of seven cataract procedures per list, as standard, by the end of September 2025
- Streamlining pathways and removing steps that do not add benefit value to a patient’s healthcare journey.
Mr Miles added: “I am determined to work with health boards to deliver a stronger and more sustainable NHS for the people of Wales.
“These service improvements, together with the extra funding, will help to provide better access for patients to planned care.”
