Nearly 75,000 people are waiting a year or more for an outpatient appointment when there should be one, according to the latest NHS Wales performance data. The outpatient target - first target to tackle the NHS backlog following the coronavirus pandemic - has been missed.
Last April, the Welsh Government had set a post-Covid target to see nobody waiting more than one year for a first appointment by the end of 2022. However, the number of people waiting stood at 74,976. Over half of those waiting more than a year fell under three specialist areas - ophthalmology, ear nose and throat (ENT), and trauma and orthopaedics.
The Welsh Government has said that it is "disappointed that this ambitious target, which was not set in England, has not been met," and that it will continue to press health boards to focus on those waiting the longest once urgent cases have been dealt with.
Read more: The bleak picture of how bad cancer waiting times are in Wales
Additionally, just over half of cancer patients in Wales (52.9%) started their first treatment within 62 days of being suspected of having cancer in December 2022. It is the second worst month since the Welsh Government's Suspected Cancer Pathway was introduced in August 2019, according to Cancer Research UK, with October 2022 being the worst.
A spokesperson for the Welsh Government has said it continues to "prioritise the most urgent cases which can mean prioritising many people who have already been waiting over the 62 day cancer target." You can read more about that here.
There were improvements in some areas of emergency care, however, including Ambulance response times, handover delays, and A&E waiting times. In addition to this, the number of people waiting for for hospital treatment has also fallen for the third month in a row.
Ambulance response times improved compared to record lows in previous months, with 48.9% of "red" calls (those regarded as immediately life-threatening) arriving within eight minutes in January. However, this remains below the 65% target and is worse than 12 months earlier.
The Welsh Government said that January had seen lower levels of demand on ambulance services, which helped to improve response times, as well as actions taken to increase capacity including the provision of nearly 600 community beds. However, there were 23,035 'lost' hours, with ambulances stuck outside A&E units and unable to drop off patients beyond the 15 minute target.
A&E waiting times also showed an improvement, with 69% of people being seen within the four hour target in January. Nearly 9,000 people, however, spent 12 or more hours in A&E before being seen - the lowest figure in more than a year. However, under current targets, patients should not be waiting that long.
The number of patients in hospital, despite being well enough to be discharged, also fell by approximately 10% compared to the previous month. But around 1,000 patients were still waiting for a care package or for support to be arranged.
While waiting lists for hospital treatment fell by 1.75% (a total of 735,139 patient pathways), it remains the sixth highest number on record. It is important to note that some patients are on more than one waiting list and it is estimated that there were 577,400 individuals waiting, which is down 8,500 on the month.
Numbers for those waiting a year or more (just under 162,000) fell for the fourth month in a row, as did the number of those waiting two years or more - though the Welsh Government said waits were "unacceptable long" in some specialist areas. There are still 22% of those on the waiting list waiting more than a year in Wales, compared to less than 6% in England.
Responding to the data, the Welsh Government said: "We continue to press health boards, to focus on those areas where the lists are longest and to explain how they plan to match performance standards achieved elsewhere in the UK."
Despite improvements in some areas, the Welsh Government has said, in response to the data, that emergency care is not where it expected it to be. A response to the data read: "Whilst emergency care performance has improved over the last month, it is not where we expect it to be, we are still seeing far too many people experiencing delays across the system.
"We continue to drive system improvements, including extending same-day emergency care services to open seven-days a week, improving management of 999 patients on the phone, and implementing operational guidance to support hospital flow."
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