On the face of it the Health Minister’s decision to waive the requirement for the Welsh Ambulance Service to make efficiency savings in the next financial year is good news. However, the commitment she has made is deceptive.
In actual fact the the only waiver is the Welsh Ambulance Service Trust’s contribution to Health Commission Wales’ efficiency savings, not their own. The requirement for the Ambulance Trust to make savings still stands.
There are two needs still to be met if the ambulance service is to be put onto a sound and sustainable footing. These are to write off the Trust’s debt in the same way as the Minister has written off debt for other health boards, and to fund the recommended steps necessary to achieve medium and long-term efficiency.
What the Minister has conceded so far is a minimal amount which prevents the ambulance service having to cut overtime and hence cause a drop in its performance right now in December. But it only prevents those measures because the Wales Ambulance Service Trust is making non-recurrent savings by re-scheduling and other measures and making unsustainable cuts in training and elsewhere. This situation cannot be kept up into the next year.
It has taken six months for the Minister to respond to the efficiency review into the Ambulance service and she has still failed to say if she will accept all the recommendations. If she does accept them then it will involve more money being provided by her to the service.
In the meantime she should not pretend that this solitary decision has sorted out the ambulance service’s problems. It is just the start.
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