Minister 'very happy' with latest drop in hospital waiting times

WALES' health secretary, Jeremy Miles, has said he is 'very happy' with Wales' latest NHS waiting time figures - but political opponents insist the Welsh Government is on track to miss a key target it set itself. There has been a fall in the longest waits, and the overall size of the waiting list fell for the third month in a row.

- Ruth Mosalski

However, the figures also show a rise in the number of life-threatening calls made to the ambulance service, and that only half were met in the eight-minute target time.

In February, patients waiting less than four hours in Welsh emergency departments increased to 66.9% - the target is 95%.

The Welsh Government had said it wanted to get to a target of 8,000 for people waiting two years or more for treatment. Those figures, expected to be released in next month's data, show nearly 16,000 pathways still waiting over two years with just weeks to go.

Key points from yesterday's data include:

■ The number of life-threatening calls to the ambulance service in Wales was the equivalent of 174 a day with half responded to within eight minutes;

■ There was an average of 3,107 daily attendances to emergency departments, an increase compared to the previous month;

■ The number of people waiting to start treatment in February decreased from just over 796,800 to just over 793,900;

■ The proportion of patient pathways, which is not the same as the number of individual patients because some people have multiple open pathways, waiting less than 26 weeks increased to 54.3% in February;

■ There are about 614,200 individual patients on treatment waiting lists in Wales;