Staff from across Hywel Dda have been praised for their “remarkable achievement” in helping to reduce patient waiting times for many planned operations by 100% in under four years.
In August 2015 over 7,000 patients were waiting more than 36 weeks for treatment across a number of specialities. However by March 2019 that figure was reduced to zero and Chief Executive Steve Moore has paid tribute to everyone involved in what he described as a “real team effort.”
He added: “First and foremost I’d like to say a tremendous thank you to everyone who has been involved in helping us to reduce our Referral to Treatment Targets. We’ve hit a really important milestone through the hard work of the teams across the health board, and with support from Welsh Government.
“We recognise too that while this is a significant achievement, 36 weeks still represents a significant time period for patients to wait for treatment, particularly when in pain, and we will continue our focus to further improve waiting times through the year ahead.”
Jeremy Thomas, Senior Charge Nurse in Theatres at Prince Philip Hospital in Llanelli, added: “At the moment a lot of the patients are being seen and operated on in an extremely short period of time – we’re very efficient. We don’t have the sort of bed issues that we’ve had over previous winters and the last financial year has been very good to us in that respect, so times have reduced considerably and that’s why I think we’ve achieved our targets.”
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