First Minister Mark Drakeford firmly maintains that the A&E waiting times in Wales have not been under-reported and are comparable to figures from England.
This assertion comes in response to allegations, which have been vehemently denied by the Welsh government, that thousands of patients are missing from official statistics.
While publicly available waiting time data suggests that Welsh hospitals have recently outperformed their English counterparts, a collective representing emergency physicians has raised doubts about this.
During a session of questions in the Senedd, leaders from the opposition inquired with Mr. Drakeford to confirm the accurate counting of all patients.
Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservative group, referred to information published by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which indicated that 45,000 patients had not been included in the published data between January and June.
Mr Drakeford said: “If there has been any misunderstanding of the data the misunderstanding does not lie with the Welsh government.
“We do not exclude clinical exceptions from the data reported and the data that we do report is comparable with data reported elsewhere as we always have maintained.”
He added “not a single patient’s care” is affected by these figures.
Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth stated that the Royal College had consistently brought up concerns about A&E under-reporting with government ministers and officials. However, Mr. Drakeford remained resolute in his assertion that the “figures have not been under-reported.”
