Senedd Member for Vale of Clwyd, Gareth Davies, has today voiced strong support for a petition calling for an end to corridor care in Wales, with backing from The Royal College of Nursing Wales and BMA Cymru, who jointly raised the alarm on patient safety, calling on the Welsh Government to eradicate corridor care. With the petition gaining over 10,000 signatures, it progressed to the Senedd Petition’s Committee and was debated today in the Senedd, with Mr Davies taking part to highlight the growing pressures facing hospitals and frontline NHS staff.
He emphasised the seriousness of the issue for communities across North Wales, where patients are increasingly being treated on trolleys and chairs in busy hospital corridors due to a lack of capacity and delays elsewhere in the system. He echoed the concerns raised by the BEDS campaign – a campaign backed by former Welsh practitioners, in addition to highlighting their solutions to the ongoing crisis in A&E and the continued use of corridor care.
He also drew attention to the significant reduction in community hospital beds over the past quarter century, a change he said has left North Wales particularly exposed. He said that over the past 25 years, North Wales alone has lost around 20% of its hospital beds, most of them being community beds, arguing that the system has been left without the ‘pressure valve’ that allows patients ready for discharge to move out of acute hospital settings safely and efficiently.
Mr Davies reiterated calls for the long-delayed community hospital on the site of the Royal Alexandra in Rhyl to be delivered in full, including the number of beds originally promised. He said that restoring this capacity is essential to tackling the root causes of corridor care and ensuring hospitals such as Ysbyty Glan Clwyd can function safely and effectively.
He urged the Welsh Government to follow the example set by the current UK Government by establishing a clear target and plan to eliminate corridor care, which the UK Government has set at 2029. He stressed that the practice is not inevitable but the result of political decisions that can be changed.
Commenting following the debate, Gareth Davies MS said:
“No one in Wales should ever have to endure hospital care in corridors or waiting rooms - it’s a morally unacceptable practice that signals a system under intolerable strain, and we must see clear achievable targets set by the Welsh Government for its elimination.
“The treatment of patients in corridors never should have happened to begin with, and without restoring sufficient community bed capacity that has been eroded over the past two decades, we won’t get a grip on the problem.
“The construction of North Denbighshire Community Hospital on the site of the Royal Alex will go some way to alleviating the strain on Glan Clwyd Hospital, helping to eliminate the unacceptable practice of corridor care, and I’ve called on the Welsh Government to begin its construction without delay.”