Written question WQ100526

Our policy expectation for health boards is to both minimise the need to use day surgery beds for emergency care and improve experience and outcome for people who need hospital admission, thereby improving flow throughout the hospital and wider health and care system. This includes reducing long waits in emergency departments, improving timely assessment and treatment, earlier discharges in the day, reducing delayed discharges, and strengthening alternatives to admission where clinically appropriate. I will launch a new policy approach to drive improvement in November.

Where exceptional operational pressures occur, health boards may need to take short-term actions to maintain patient safety. However, I expect Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board to have robust plans in place to protect elective and day surgery capacity wherever possible and to minimise disruption to planned care. NHS Wales Performance and Improvement will continue to monitor performance and support the health board in delivering improvements in both urgent and emergency care and planned care services.