Written question WQ93968

Hywel Dda University Health Board was placed into level four targeted intervention on April 30, 2024 reflecting concerns about finance and planning, performance and outcomes, quality and safety, leadership and government. An escalation framework, including the de-escalation criteria has been agreed with the health board.

All health boards in targeted intervention or special measures are subject to additional scrutiny. For Hywel Dda this includes a quarterly meeting between the health board chief executive and the chief executive of NHS Wales. I will be meeting the chair regularly and progress against the framework will form part of those discussions.

The Welsh Government’s quality statement for cancer describes what good looks like for cancer services across all parts of Wales. This is underpinned by nationally optimised pathways for each cancer type, which provide timed pathways of care describing how organisations can achieve the cancer target. We expect all health boards to be working towards achieving the target of at least 75% of people starting first definitive treatment within 62 days.

Aligned to Hywel Dda UHB’s targeted intervention, the NHS Executive is supporting the health board to improve its cancer performance through a focus on reducing unwarranted variation and driving a sustainable improvement in cancer waiting times, including a focus on component waits across the pathway and increasing straight-to-test rates.

The health board have made good progress in improving performance against the national mental health measures.

Working across health boards and moving pathways into community optometry services, where clinically appropriate, has been a priority for the Welsh Government to improve access to specialist hospital care and support care closer to home.

We have invested an additional £30m across Wales since 2022-23 on a recurrent basis to transform the optometry workforce and pathways to reduce the demand on specialist hospital eye services and enable the shift of services into primary care optometry. This covers a range of primary eye care pathways including core optometry work such as NHS sight tests.

Hywel Dda University Health Board has received funding based on its population and activity. It has also received support for planned care recovery, including ophthalmology, from the national planned care transformation and recovery fund. It received £697,137 in 2021-22 to support improved eye care services and a further £255,300 in 2022-23 and 2023-24.

A national programme of work has been put in place to support the movement of ophthalmology pathways from secondary care into primary and community care in 2024-25.