NHS Wales: Eluned Morgan promises to transform the service

The delivery of urgent care will be "transformed" to help the Welsh NHS during an "exceptionally challenging period", Wales' health minister has pledged.

Eluned Morgan has unveiled a strategy aimed at reducing the number of people seeking hospital treatment.

It includes annual funding of £25m to "support people to access the right care in the right place".

Monthly A&E and NHS waiting time figures are due to be published later.

Ms Morgan said demand on Wales' GPs and emergency departments had continued to grow beyond levels seen before the pandemic, adding: "Staff are under real pressure."

The government, she said, wanted to make sure everyone could access the "high quality care they need in the right place, the first time".

"Often people feel they have no option but to go to their GP, call 999 or go to their nearest emergency department for advice or treatment," Ms Morgan said.

"But under our new plans, people with urgent care needs could be treated elsewhere by the many different health professionals working in NHS Wales."

Health boards have had funding to set up new "urgent primary care centres", she said, where people can be seen without the need for a GP appointment or to go to A&E.

Additional money will be made available for schemes to help people return home from hospital, reducing unnecessarily long stays and freeing up essential bed capacity.

The summer holidays and hot weather, along with the easing of lockdown restrictions and an increase in Covid cases, has heaped more pressure on the NHS.

The latest A&E admittance figures will be published later.

The most recent statistics showed there were 85,367 admittances to emergency departments in Wales in May - an increase on pre-pandemic levels.

The number of people waiting for NHS treatment will also be updated.

The most recent figures showed more people than ever were waiting for planned treatments in Wales with 595,272 on waiting lists in April.

Dr Olwen Williams, vice president for Wales at the Royal College of Physicians, described the proposals as "a wonderful opportunity".

"Care in the community is definitely the way forward," she said.

"And we need our primary care teams, our ambulance services, our community services, social services and our medical services all to work together to ensure that individuals get the right care in the right place at the right time."

Dr Williams added there were "two big challenges" involved.

She said the first was whether people would accept the change of "care closer to home".

The second, she explained, was to do with staffing, and how health boards would deliver the changes.

Wales Ambulance Service chief executive Jason Killens said a combination of factors in recent days had put the service under "extreme pressure".

"It's not just here in Wales that we're seeing this unprecedented level of demand on the emergency ambulance service, and indeed on the NHS as a whole," Mr Killens said.

"Our staff have been doing fantastic work for 18 months through the pandemic, and with this warmer weather, they are working in extremely difficult conditions and I pay tribute to them because they've all been fantastic."