THOUSANDS of patients in Gwent are set to have key diagnostic tests away from the area’s NHS hospitals, to try to plug a massive capacity gap.

A perfect storm of increased demand, staffing problems, and broken equipment during the summer, has led to big increases in the number of patients who have waited beyond the target eight weeks for MRI and ultrasound scans, and endoscopies.

By the end of August, 4,102 patients in Gwent had been waiting beyond the maximum eight weeks, up by more than quarter since the end of July.

During the first six months of 2016, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board significantly reduced the number its patients waiting longer than eight weeks for diagnostic tests, but July and August saw a series of issues arise that have combined to begin to reverse those gains.

Additional external capacity for MRI and ultrasound scanning ended, but underlying capacity problems had not gone away, leading to what a health board report calls “significant rises” in long waits.

Increased demand, coupled with a reduction in consultants and the failure of equipment at the Royal Gwent Hospital, have meanwhile caused problems in endoscopy. The equipment issue alone has resulted in the loss of almost 400 endoscopies.

Mobile MRI scanning is being deployed and the health board hopes that this will rescue the situation by the end of next March.

What the report calls “external capacity” will be needed however, to reduce waits longer than the maximum eight weeks for ultrasound scans to 800, and for endoscopies to 1,928 during the same period.

These figures represent reductions agreed with the Welsh Government.

The health board is warning that if no external capacity is secured, around 5,650 patients could be waiting longer than eight weeks for ultrasound scans or endoscopies by the end of next March.

Such capacity for around 500 endoscopies has so far been identified, while “urgent discussions” around an option for ultrasound scans are ongoing.