As anyone in Wales who has had to access hospital services in recent years will testify, it can be an arduous and drawn-out process.
On a daily basis I receive correspondence from constituents who have been waiting for too long, often years, for treatment.
The situation has been getting progressively worse year on year, and given comments made by former Labour First Minister, now Finance Minister, Mark Drakeford, it seems that addressing waiting times is not a priority for the Welsh Government.
Just as the latest NHS statistics for Wales revealed an increase in the NHS treatment waiting list to 802,268 pathways, the highest figure on record, for the tenth month in a row, he said on a podcast last week that Wales was “over hospitalised”.
His exact words were: “If you're asking me, if I had a blank sheet of paper and could just do the things I think needed to be done, we would have fewer hospitals in Wales. We have too many hospitals and too many beds.”
There will be patients in all parts of Wales whose experiences with the Welsh NHS provides them with good reason to contest his view.
The latest health statistics for Wales also negate his controversial words, revealing another increase in waits of two years or more for treatment, and yet another worsening of the figures for emergency department waits, which are worse in North Wales than anywhere else.
People are dying unnecessarily the length and breadth of Wales, families are losing loved ones prematurely and NHS staff morale is plummeting. The health service in Wales is in crisis and much of this is a result of hospital closures and beds being axed.
Raising this with the First Minister in the Senedd chamber last week, I referred to the Royal College of Nursing’s ‘On the frontline of the UK’s corridor care crisis’ report, in which beds were cited as a problem over 500 times.
Yet, despite our population having increased by 10 per cent since 1999, hospital beds have reduced by over 30 per cent in that time.
Here in North Wales, I, along with other Welsh Conservatives representing the region, have repeatedly called on the Welsh Government to fulfil its promises, made over 12 years ago, to build a hospital to serve North Denbighshire, relieving pressure at Ysbty Glan Clwyd.
Plans for this new hospital, on the former Royal Alexandra site in Rhyl, were revealed in 2013, but to date there has not be a spade in the ground.
We have seen money spent on changing speed limits and more politicians in the Senedd, yet when it comes to investing in our health service, we are told the pot is empty.
I am more than confident that front-line staff in every health board work exceptionally hard to provide a first-class and timely service for Welsh patients, but currently they are being expected to deliver on waiting time and other targets without the necessary resources, This just isn’t acceptable and must be addressed.
The excessive bureaucracy and bloated management that our NHS is currently bogged down with must also be tackled.
However, I must stress that we won’t make any significant progress in improving things until Ministers in Cardiff Bay accept that our NHS is in crisis.
It is clear that in order to fix our broken NHS and enable our fantastic health service staff to deliver the standards patients need and deserve, we need a different approach.
