.Nearly 1,400 patients annually wait at least a year for an operation, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show. In England, which is 17 times larger, only 574 people suffer the same delay.
In just five years, 99 heart disease victims have died while awaiting treatment at hospitals in Cardiff and Swansea.
The lengthy delays were a ‘plausible explanation’ for their deaths, the Royal College of Surgeons said.
Other patients deteriorate in the months before their operations, making it more difficult to treat them when they go under the knife. The college warned last year that cardiac patients were regularly dying on the waiting list for surgery at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.
Today’s investigation has uncovered shocking stories including that of a retired businessman who expects to be dead by Christmas because delays in seeing a heart specialist have left him too ill to be treated.
By this time his condition was so serious that the specialist told him there was nothing more they could do.
Official statistics show Welsh residents must wait much longer than their counterparts in England for essential diagnostic tests. Some 36.5 per cent wait more than six weeks for an MRI scan. Across the border the figure is just 1.2 per cent.
A shocking 46.3 per cent of patients in Wales face waits of over six weeks for a colonoscopy examination, which is used to look for signs of bowel cancer. In England only 3.5 per cent do
We're often very quick to accept glowing praise regarding the NHS and more often than not it does a grand job but waiting times have always been the major source of its criticism and this certainly doesn't help. Its a disgrace that in modern Britain people are dying from an outdated system that isn't supporting them properly. This should be a point of national shame. I'm not sure how to fix it but certainly money alone isn't the answer .
What say you?
