Madam,

Your correspondent, Ian MacIntyre (‘Cheaper plasters at health centre gave an allergic reacton’, 18 April) gives examples of how financial costcutting by Betsi Cadwaladr is hurting patients at the primary care level.

The Welsh Government has just released the waiting time statistics between referral to hospital care treatment and the actual hospital care intervention, demonstrating how our patients are being hurt by service cuts in secondary care also.

At the end of February, more than 7,900 patients in north Wales had been waiting for treatment for more than 36 weeks, the maximum waiting time formally allowed by the Welsh Government.

This compares with less than 1,000 waiting over 36 weeks in January 2013 when the health board approved its disastrous ‘Health Care in North Wales is Changing’ strategy.

Older people in particular are suffering from the Betsi Cadwaladr board’s insistence in viewing service cuts to reduce expenditure as more desirable than providing timely patient care.

Having to wait in one’s later years for more than 36 weeks for a necessary procedure is little short of cruelty, yet 3,205 people have been waiting more than 36 weeks for orthopaedics and trauma treatment, 710 for dermatology, 616 for ophthalmology, 573 for urology and 514 for ear, nose and throat interventions.

No, it isn’t as bad elsewhere in Wales and is much better in England.

That is why Betsi Cadwaladr is graded as in special measures.

But when is the Labour health minister going to put patients first and make wholesale changes to the Betsi Cadwaladr management team?

Yours etc, Tom Brooks, Borth-y-Gest, Porthmadog.

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