NORTH Wales’ health board has come under fire from the Welsh Conservatives after the ‘worst stats on record’ were released.

Official Welsh Government statistics released last week show that two of north Wales’ three major hospitals have achieved the worst accident and emergency performance for a Welsh hospital since records began.

Wrexham Maelor Hospital saw fewer than half its patients (49.7 per cent) within the Welsh Government’s own four-hour target time in August, while nearby Ysbyty Glan Clwyd had a rate of 52.9 per cent.

The Welsh Labour Government’s target is to treat, transfer, and discharge 95 per cent of its A&E patients across Wales within four hours. The target has not been met in 10 years.

Welsh Government has stated it’s investing in north Wales’ hospitals whereas the ailing health board has blamed the hot weather and busier than usual A&E departments for the less than impressive figures.

Both hospitals are managed by Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board which covers all of north Wales.

The health board has been in special measures and under direct Welsh Government control for over three years.

Since the beginning of the year, Wrexham and Glan Clwyd hospitals have been consistently the worst performing against the four-hour A&E target.

Commenting, Welsh Conservative and shadow health secretary Angela Burns AM, said: “Everybody knows that NHS staff across the country work tirelessly and passionately, but these shocking statistics clearly show that staff and patients are being let down by a complacent Welsh Labour Government.

“People in north Wales are sick to the back teeth of how they are being forgotten by the Welsh Government: having seen their health board in special measures for three years, it clearly demonstrates Welsh Labour let Betsi Cadwaladr UHB atrophy to a terrible state without noticing, or have failed to raise back up to acceptable standards in nearly 40 months.

“It is vital we see actual improvements to these units in the hope that Welsh hospitals can catch up with those in England, so that the people of Wales are not disadvantaged by devolution.”

In reply, a Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We continue to support Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board to ensure local people receive timely emergency care.

“We provided £6.8m earlier this year to strengthen the health board’s operational capacity at each of the three main hospitals in north Wales, and a further £1.5m over two years to improve performance at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd specifically. The NHS Wales Delivery Unit is also working at the Wrexham Maelor site to support local performance improvement.”

Gary Doherty, chief executive of BCUHB said: “The health board acknowledges that, despite a significant amount of hard work and focus to improve the flow through our emergency departments, our waiting times within our emergency departments are not the service we should be providing to our community.

“For the month of August, overall, around seven out of 10 patients met the four hour waiting time standard.

“We have had an extremely busy summer which has seen the number of patients coming to our emergency departments being significantly above the norm, driven in part by the very hot weather.

“We are grateful for the investment we have recently received from Welsh Government for additional clinical and operational capacity which will help hugely with delivering improvement with pace before winter sets in.

“We will continue to work with our staff and our partners to improve our services going forward both inside our hospitals and across the health and social care system.”

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