- Number of cancer ‘refugees’ quadrupled in a decade to 15,450 last year
- Nearly four times as many Welsh patients cross over as English ones do
- One woman in labour travelled 55 miles to avoid birth in Welsh hospital
- Chiefs cancelled visit by international OECD group at ‘very short notice’
- Figures come on Day 2 of Daily Mail series on Labour-run Welsh NHS
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Guy Adams for the Daily Mail
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Desperate: Coral Wilson, 24, travelled 55 miles while in labour to avoid giving birth in a Welsh hospital
Patients are so desperate to flee the crisis-hit Welsh NHS they are going private or moving to England, it emerged last night.
Tens of thousands cross the border every year to escape lengthy waiting lists or access life-saving drugs. Nearly four times as many Welsh patients are treated in England as the other way round, official figures show.
The number of cancer sufferers travelling to England has quadrupled from 3,471 a decade ago to 15,450 last year. The statistics emerged on the second day of a Daily Mail series exposing the inadequacies of the Labour-run health service in Wales.
Campaigners and politicians have called for a full-scale investigation of the problems.
Today the Mail can reveal that Labour is facing damaging claims that it has delayed a major international inquiry into the Welsh NHS until after next year’s general election.
In a letter to Welsh health minister Mark Drakeford, seen by the Mail, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt expressed concern that the Cardiff government cancelled a visit by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development at ‘very short notice’.
The international watchdog is planning a comparative study of the health services in the four nations of the UK.
In last night’s letter, Mr Hunt said there had been ‘hard work and planning on behalf of all our countries’ to reach an agreement on the study – with a final report supposed to be available by February.
‘The OECD inquiry presents an opportunity for a completely independent look at whether the NHS is better run by Labour in Wales, or the Conservatives in England,’ said Tory MP David Davies.
‘You would have thought Labour, who pride themselves on being the party of the NHS, would be delighted to take part in such an inquiry, but they are doing everything possible to avoid it.’
Today’s Mail investigation has uncovered shocking stories of ‘NHS refugees’, including:
- A new mother whose father drove her 55 miles to an English maternity unit when she went into labour in an attempt to avoid her giving birth in a Welsh hospital;
- A cancer sufferer forced to register with a doctor in London to get the drug Avastin, which can extend the lives of patients by years;Â
- An artist who had to pay thousands of pounds for private treatment in Bristol to diagnose her life-threatening pancreatic condition.Â
The Labour leadership of the Welsh government yesterday sought to dismiss yesterday’s revelations by issuing a lengthy rebuttal of ten statements that the Mail stands by.
First minister Carwyn Jones said: ‘To suggest that the NHS in Wales is somehow in every way in a more difficult state than in England is quite simply wrong.’ Mr Jones admitted he had not read the Daily Mail’s exposure of failings in the Welsh NHS before dismissing the investigation out of hand.
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said: ‘To suggest that the NHS in Wales is somehow in every way in a more difficult state than in England is quite simply wrong’. He admitted he had not read the Daily Mail’s exposé
He told a press conference yesterday: ‘I understand that what was reported today was mainly stuff that goes back months or years, not anything that’s particularly current – matters that have been dealt with already.’
But health campaigner Gareth Williams, whose 82-year-old mother Lilian suffered alleged neglect before her death in hospital in 2012, said: ‘It isn’t the media denigrating the NHS.
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‘People have told us time and again that they intend to sell up and leave Wales because they are desperately concerned for their health and the health of their loved ones.
‘It is most important that a bright light is shone into the corridors of the NHS in Wales, and I welcome the Daily Mail’s scrutiny of the Welsh health service.’
Kirsty Williams, the Liberal Democrats’ leader in Wales, said: ‘Labour’s running of the NHS in Wales is nothing short of a national scandal. If English voters want to see what a Labour health service will look under Ed Miliband they should look no further than Wales.’
Denied vital drug: Cancer patient Annie Mulholland, from Cardiff, travelled to London to obtain Avastin
Some 31,626 people registered with the Welsh NHS received treatment in England last year, but just 8,037 English patients went the other way to be seen by medical staff in Wales.
Welsh patients were admitted to hospital in England 53,457 times in 2013-14, official figures from the Welsh Assembly show.
By contrast, English patients had only 10,940 stays in Welsh hospitals over the same period. The discrepancy is only partly down to the fact that some big city hospitals in England are larger and have more specialist facilities than those in Wales.
Around 20,000 English patients choose to register with a Welsh GP in order to take advantage of the fact that prescriptions are free in Wales. They will also use Welsh hospitals if they are nearer their border-region homes.
The Welsh government rejected Mr Hunt’s claims that it was obstructing the inquiry. A spokesman for Mr Drakeford said: ‘The OECD visit has been postponed because it became clear that the UK Government were putting party politics ahead of good scrutiny.’
A Welsh government spokesman said: ‘To describe patients from one country being treated in another as ‘refugees’ is insulting and ignores the relationship people living on either side of the border have with the two health services.
‘Some Welsh patients, especially those who live close to the English border, will find it easier and quicker to access routine NHS hospital services in England because they are closer to their homes than facilities in Wales.’
An urgent independent inquiry into the Welsh NHS is being demanded by the British Medical Association, the Conservatives, Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour MP Ann Clwyd.
Health refugees forced to sell up and move to England for life-saving care
By GUY ADAMSÂ
It’s the shocking series that demolishes Ed Miliband’s claim that only Labour can be trusted on health. Yesterday, we highlighted cases of patients in Wales who died needlessly. Today we reveal the ‘health refugees’ fleeing the Welsh NHS…
Less than two miles from Mariana Robinson’s stone cottage in the pretty village of Llandogo is a sign informing motorists they are crossing the border between England and Wales. Her home sits a few hundred yards above the western bank of the River Wye, in an ancient woodland that has, at different points in history, belonged to each of the two countries.
Today, however, Llandogo is part of Wales. And that unfortunate geographic fact last year left Mariana facing a £3,000 medical bill. The reason? Serious bowel and stomach problems, which had left the 60-year-old artist suffering constant pain.
Frontier: Mariana Robinson, who lives just two miles over the Welsh border, sought treatment in Bristol
After waiting an astonishing ten months to see a Welsh NHS gastroenterologist, she resorted in October 2013 to paying to see private specialists over the Severn Bridge in Bristol. There, after a series of tests, doctors concluded Mariana has a rare and life-threatening pancreatic condition.
They duly recommended that she undergo an urgent biopsy in order to get a full diagnosis and outline a full treatment plan.
That was a year ago. Since then, Mariana — who cannot afford to pay to have this second round of treatment privately — has been waiting for the Welsh NHS to carry out her supposedly ‘urgent’ biopsy.
So far, she’s had precious little success, aside from being offered an appointment to see an NHS specialist in December — some 24 months after she first sought treatment
Adding insult to this injury, she has recently learned that England’s NHS would be willing to carry out the procedure in a matter of weeks. But Mariana’s local health authority, the Aneurin Bevan Health Board, refuses to foot a bill for her to be seen more quickly outside Wales.
Despite suffering daily pain, Mariana is therefore now ‘seriously considering’ selling her home and moving across the border, believing it to be the only way to secure acceptable health care she so urgently needs.
‘It’s ludicrous, and the thought of it breaks my heart because I love my house,’ she says. ‘But the Welsh NHS has deteriorated rapidly in the past few years. You don’t know who you are going to see, or when, or where.’
Mariana is also now deeply concerned about what might happen to her in the event that her condition leads to a medical emergency. After all, the College of Emergency Medicine warned recently that Welsh AE Departments are ‘at the point of meltdown’.
‘There have been many occasions, in recent months, where I’ve been so very sick, and have been tempted to call an ambulance,’ she says. ‘But I’d rather die at home in my bed than on some trolley queuing for a hospital bed in Cardiff.’
So far, so outrageous. But perhaps the most depressing aspect of Mariana’s situation is just how common it has become.
Official figures show that an extraordinary total of 31,000 Welsh patients are now travelling to England for treatment each year.
Mariana’s MP David Davies, left, dubbed her part of a growing band of ‘NHS Refugees’ crossing the border for better care, while Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, right, said he was concerned about a cancelled OECD visit
Meanwhile, after 15 years of Labour rule, the Welsh NHS is facing ‘imminent meltdown’, according to a British Medical Association report published last month, which called for ‘an urgent and full-scale independent inquiry into all NHS services throughout Wales’.
Little wonder that in April, when Mariana’s case was raised in the Commons, her MP, David Davies, dubbed her part of a growing band of ‘NHS Refugees’ crossing the border in search of better care.
‘The tragedy of her situation is just how common it is,’ says the Conservative MP for Monmouth.
‘Most of my constituency lies a short drive from England. Every few days, I hear from yet another person who has been forced to pay for private treatment there, or who is considering moving home because of the dire state of the Welsh NHS.’
Many seek access to routine surgery. In Wales, you must wait on average 170 days for a hip or knee replacement, according to a recent Nuffield Trust report. In England and Scotland that figure is a mere 70 days.
‘Waiting lists are longer in Wales. Healthcare spending is going down there, and yet it’s going up in England,’ adds Mr Davies. ‘The system is in crisis. I liken the border to a sort of Iron Curtain; when it comes to healthcare, people will do anything to get to the other side.’
David Cameron clearly agrees. Earlier this year, he described Offa’s Dyke as a ‘line between life and death’ thanks to the ‘national scandal’ of the Welsh NHS. The service has been entirely run by Labour since Welsh devolution in 1999.
Between 2010 and this year, the party cut Welsh NHS budgets by eight per cent, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, even as the Tory-led government in England increased NHS spending there by one per cent above the rate of inflation each year.
Against this backdrop, tales abound of so-called ‘health refugees’ crossing between the two systems.
Take Annie Mulholland from Cardiff, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2011. Like many patients, the 61-year-old grandmother wished to take Avastin, an expensive but potentially life-saving drug which is widely available in England through the NHS’s Cancer Drugs Fund.
In Wales, though, there is no Cancer Drugs Fund because the Labour administration believes that, among other things, it enriches drug companies.
The vast majority of health boards (which are largely run by Labour activists and local trade unionists) refuse to endorse the drug, for similar reasons.
As a result, Annie was forced to register as a resident of her daughter’s cramped home in Brixton, South London, and sign up as a patient of a local GP to receive the drug.
She is currently undergoing Avastin treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Fulham.
‘In the NHS in Wales,’ she says, ‘no one tells you anything. Patients are left completely in the dark.
‘Your care is something that happens to you, something that’s inflicted upon you, not something you have a say in.’
Clash: The Welsh government, which runs the service, issued a rebuttal to ten points in yesterday’s coverage
Annie adds that her original Welsh oncologist didn’t mention the possibility of being prescribed Avastin because she knew her health board wouldn’t fund it. Annie only found out about its availability from a charity.
‘I was very angry that I hadn’t been properly informed about what drugs are out there.
‘The tragic thing is that I’m not alone. I know women who are holding bake-sales to raise money to pay for the treatment. One friend raised £2,000 but it wasn’t even enough for one course.’
Annie’s experience highlights a depressing divide between the state of NHS cancer treatment in England and Wales.
‘When my doctor found a lump, I had to wait 12 weeks for an ultrasound scan, and that’s before they could arrange an appointment to see a gynaecologist, for cancer diagnosis, treatment and all of that,’ she says.
‘Yet in England, I was referred within a few days after registering.’
Official statistics paint a similar picture. For example, 50 per cent of Welsh cancer patients have to wait six weeks or more for crucial scans and tests. In England, by contrast, the figure is around six per cent.
Cancer patients are not the only ones heading over the border, either.
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