Over the last two years, £100 million of additional funding has been provided to NHS Wales to reduce referral to treatment, diagnostic and therapy waiting times. This has resulted in the lowest number of people waiting over 36 weeks for referral to treatment for over four years.
Similar improvements have also been seen in diagnostic waiting times, with the latest figures the best since September 2009 and in therapy waiting times, with the March 2018 position the lowest since June 2011.
Health Boards have now submitted plans to access funding from the £30m performance fund to further reduce waiting lists by March 2019. Health Boards will only receive the full amount of funding if they meet the agreed delivery targets to cut waiting lists.
Health Secretary Vaughan Gething said:
“This extra funding is available to health boards to help them reduce waiting times in key pressure areas. I recently announced our long term vision for the NHS and Social Care, A Healthier Wales, backed by £100m to transform the way the service is delivered in the future. But in the short to medium term we also need to find new ways to reduce waiting times for patients who have already waited beyond our targets.
“Health boards will need to meet the targets they set out in order to receive the full funding. I expect to see significant improvements on waiting times as we did in the first two years of this fund.”
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