Today at the Royal Welsh Show I launched our party’s 3 point-plan for Wales’ NHS that puts patients first.
The Welsh Liberal Democrats have a wide range of policies and proposals for reforms to improve our health service, but today I wanted to highlight the three key parts of our plans for the NHS ahead of next year’s Assembly elections.
The 3-point plan is as follows:
Guaranteed access to your GP: People are fed up of finding it a real struggle to make an appointment and to access their GP. In this day and age, everyone should be able to make an appointment easily – that is what the Welsh Liberal Democrats will deliver. We would properly invest in an ‘Access to GPs’ scheme to guarantee a prompt appointment and extend GP opening hours.
End mental health discrimination: I am proud that our party has led on this issue across the UK. Only last month the Welsh Liberal Democrats revealed that in just two years there has been a 472% increase in young people waiting over 14 weeks to receive mental health services. That is a disgrace, which is why we would oversee a culture change to ensure mental health is treated on a par with physical health. We would ensure that patients with mental health issues have an equal right to access treatments as those requiring physical care.
More Nurses: Patients deserve the very best care. That is why our ‘More Nurses Bill’ would ensure we have a safe number of nurses on our wards. Nurses in Wales have more patients to care for than any other country in the UK; we will change this. It’s time for a good news story in the Welsh NHS and this law has the potential to be just that.
This is an ambitious plan for Wales because the Welsh Liberal Democrats want to deliver a health service that patients need and deserve.
We want to hear from people about their experiences of our NHS. That’s why today we’ve launched a major nationwide health survey on our website. Please let us know your views.
* Kirsty Williams AM is Cabinet Secretary for Education in the Welsh Government
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2 Comments
Love the plan Kirsty … how much will it cost? What else do we have to give up to actually be able to implement this?
The beauty of the plan is that it can be largely met from existing budgets e.g. the minimum nursing plege will be met by reducing the number of expensive agency nurses and using much cheaper regular staff.