Written question WQ84762

I recently launched the national Six Goals for Urgent and Emergency Care programme, which is supported by £25m of recurrent funding to drive the transformation of urgent and emergency care services to deliver the right care in the right place, first time.

We have already made significant investment in new ways of working, such as urgent primary care centres and expanding same day emergency care services to reduce pressure on emergency and urgent care and the wider system. A national programme has also been established to deliver optimal hospital care and improve patient flow, enabling people to return home from hospital when they are ready and freeing up bed capacity in hospitals.

We have allocated £6m to the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust in 2021/2022 to deliver in excess of 36 new staff to effectively double the capacity of the 999 clinical support desk to provide improved clinical advice over the telephone and support people to access clinically safe alternatives to attending an emergency department.

The completion of the all-Wales rollout of the NHS 111 Wales telephone service, following implementation in the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board area on 16 March, provides a consistent offer to support people with urgent health needs across all parts of Wales. This includes access to out-of-hours urgent primary care services as well as advice, support or referral to the most appropriate service for their needs through a 24/7 free to access telephone service. Additional funding has also been invested to support improvements to the 111 website as part of an improved online offer to support people to select the right service for their needs.

In recognition of the need to improve delivery of safe and timely access to urgent and emergency care services, we instigated a national risk summit on 15 February to identify immediate actions to support improvement. As a product of the summit, a two-week national ‘system reset’ was implemented between 2-16 March with all health and social care partners working together with renewed energy and focus to improve performance. A national learning event will be held to review national and local actions and I expect health boards to develop plans on how they will embed any positive changes observed as a result of the system reset in to business as usual delivery.