“Health Board needs to get a grip of complaints” says MS as call for Senedd time for probe

It looks likely the Senedd will have a chance to ask questions around the local health board in the new term, with members raising issues around complaint handling.

Welsh Conservative Darren Millar MS said, “The Cabinet Secretary published a new special measures framework for the Betsi Cadwaladr health board in recent days, including the de-escalation criteria that she now expects the health board to meet before the organisation can be taken out of special measures. Obviously, there’s a great deal of interest in north Wales about the improvements that we need to see in those services, and, unfortunately, they’re not tangible improvements at the moment for most people across the region.

“One of the things which I would have hoped that the Welsh Government would also point to would have been the number of complaints that are received and resolved by the health board. But there’s no mention of complaints at all in the special measures framework, and I think they can be a very useful tool for identifying problems and whether things are actually being addressed. I’ve got complaints in my inbox, which have gone back months without a resolution, without even a response from the health board, which is clearly unacceptable

“The health board needs to, frankly, get a grip of complaints, make sure it learns from them, and that needs to be triangulated into the decision-making processes that the Cabinet Secretary is responsible for. Can I ask for a statement on the role of complaints in informing the Welsh Government about the escalation and intervention framework, in order that we can make sure that people’s lived experiences in the future are properly taken into account when the Government makes decisions about escalation frameworks?

“I’ll give you another example as well. We have a bit of a postcode lottery in north Wales, with a number of practices which are now managed practices, rather than run under general practice contracts, and the services in those practices seem to be far worse than in other local surgeries, and we have increasing problems with people accessing services which are available in other practices but aren’t available there. For example, simple and straightforward vaccinations are not available in the practice in Colwyn Bay, in the West End Medical Centre, in my own constituency. So, I think, thesre are all issues which need to be taken into account as part of these escalation frameworks and at the moment they’re not. And I would like a statement on these for the future.”

The call for a statement on the situation was echoed by Plaid Cymru’s Heledd Fychan MS, who also asked for oral statements so there would be an “opportunity to scrutinise and to ask questions in the Senedd”, “So, can I ask, therefore, will there be an opportunity early in the new term so we do have that opportunity as a Senedd? ”