THE number of patients waiting longer than eight weeks for a diagnostic test more than halved in Gwent during the first quarter of 2017.

From a little over 6,000 at the end of December, the figure fell to just below 2,500 by the end of March, 59 per cent.

But an Aneurin Bevan University Health Board warns that reducing such waits remains “challenging” - and there remains a reliance on out-of-area capacity to help drive down the numbers.

By March 31, 2,491 patients had been waiting longer than eight weeks for a diagnostic test in Gwent.

This was just below an interim end-of-financial-year target agreed between the health board and the Welsh Government, and enough to formally secure extra funding that had been made available to achieve such a result. Progress has been made across all tests subject to the eight-week target.

On December 31 last year, there were 1,923 people who had waited more than eight weeks for an ultrasound scan (non-obstetric), but by March 31, this was down to just three.

And in the same period, the number of people waiting more than eight weeks for an MRI scan fell from 1,000 to 11.

Both of these improvements had been achieved in part by the employment of mobile testing machines (MRI) and outsourcing (ultrasound), and the latter has also benefited from from increased staffing, both in-house and locum.

Long waits in endoscopy have proved the most challenging of all to tackle however.Of the 2,491 waits of more than eight weeks outstanding by March 31, 2,242 were for endoscopies.

Staffing issues, compounded by a failure of key equipment at the Royal Gwent, have meant that solving the endoscopy backlog has been a slow process.

A reduction of almost 20 per cent in such waits was achieved however, during the first quarter of 2017.

And the Argus reported last week that the health board is providing 1,750 endoscopy procedures for Gwent patients at the NHS treatment centre at Emerson’s Green in Bristol, as part of a drive to eliminate waits of more than eight weeks for diagnostic tests during 2017/18.

At the end of March, there also remained 231 patients who had waited longer than eight weeks for a nuclear medicine imaging test.