Health Secretary response to latest NHS Wales performance data: November and December 2024

Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Miles, responds to the latest NHS Wales performance data.

Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Miles, said:

The health service in Wales continues to provide quality care to thousands of people every day, in the face of high levels of demand in often challenging circumstances.

Over the period of this reporting period, we have seen an increase in flu and other winter respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19, which has increased pressure on emergency and urgent care services.

In November, I increased the amount of funding to target and reduce the longest waits to £50 million to support health boards to provide more treatments, more outpatient clinics and more diagnostic tests. These figures don’t yet reflect this investment.

Health boards have assured me patients are getting faster treatment as a result and I look forward to seeing the impact of this in the coming months.

The number of people waiting more than 2 years for treatment is now almost two-thirds lower than at its peak and the number of pathways waiting longer than a year for a first outpatient appointment is also nearly a fifth lower than at its peak in August 2022.

There were also reductions in long waits for diagnostics and therapies in November.

In December, the Welsh Ambulance Service reported record levels of immediately life-threatening ‘red’ 999 calls – 13% higher than the previous monthly record. But the average response time was faster than last month.

Performance improved against the 62 day cancer target in November, increasing to 60%, and more than 14,000 people were told the good news they did not have cancer.

Progress continues to be made in reducing the number of delayed hospital discharges. This is the fourth month in a row the total number of delays have fallen and December’s figure was the lowest in 2024.