Written question WQ90612

As has been described in this Chief Statistician’s blog, RTT data for Wales and England are not directly comparable.

While the numbers of two-year total waits are not where we committed them to be in the recovery plan of April 2022, the 20 months of consistent reduction since the targets were set shows that Welsh Government and the NHS has been focused on delivering against the commitment, and significant progress has been made.

• In November the number of pathways waiting over two years was at its lowest since August 2021, 64.8% lower than the high of March 2022.

• The number of pathways waiting over two years has reduced from 10% of the total waiting list in March 2022, to just over 3% in November 2023, thus the vast majority of pathways are waiting under two-years.

• All health boards are seeing progress and improvements are being seen across all specialities.

• Orthopaedics is a well-documented challenge across the NHS and the number of open pathways over 2 years has improved by 52% compared to November 2022.

• At the end of November 2023, there were 23 specialities with waits over 104 weeks (ten of which had fewer than 100 pathways), a reduction from 31 in November 2022.

• At the end of November, 89.4% of open pathways over 104 weeks are in just seven specialities (orthopaedics, urology, ophthalmology, general surgery, ENT, gynaecology and oral surgery).

I have challenged the health boards to continue to reduce the percentage of pathways over 2 years in the coming months. Due to some challenged specialities across some health boards, total clearance may not be achievable, as we have seen in England’s figures.