Written question WQ93541

The Wesh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust is responsible for achieving the national ambulance performance target for red calls, and health boards, via the NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee, are responsible for commissioning emergency ambulance services.

The trust has developed improvement plans to help manage more people in the community, reduce conveyance to hospital and protect valuable resources for those most in need of an urgent response. These include:

• Optimising use of the 999 clinical support desk, with an aspiration to manage up to 17% of people remotely where clinically safe to do so and reduce the number of people conveyed by ambulance to emergency departments

• A targeted workforce plan to reduce sickness absence rates and increase available capacity

• Additional volunteer capacity through the trust’s Connected Support Cymru initiative to aid decision making and support more people to remain at home.

We provided £3m to the trust in 2022-23 to pump prime the recruitment of 100 new staff to help manage increasing demand.

All health boards have Six Goals for Urgent and Emergency Care programme plans in place, supported by £2.7m in additional Welsh Government funding. Successful delivery of these plans will support improvements across a range of measures, including the reduction of ambulance handover delays contributing to improved ambulance responsiveness.

This funding is part of a wider package of more than £180m this year to support health boards and regional partnership boards to safely manage more people in the community; to avoid ambulance transport and admission to hospital; and deliver integrated solutions with social care services to improve patient flow through hospitals.