THE number of Gwent patients waiting more than 36 weeks for treatment fell by almost a third during March - but health bosses' aim of eliminating such long waits remains a distant one.

Despite the annual treatment stampede that brings an end to the NHS Wales financial year, as health boards spend extra funding provided by the Welsh Government to address waiting times issues, 2,601 Gwent patients had been waiting longer than 36 weeks for treatment by March 31, out of 18,938 across Wales.

The Welsh Government target decrees that no patient should wait more than 36 weeks for treatment, from the point of referral, but increasingly tight budgets, allied to capacity issues in some areas and some specialties, mean that meeting it has once again proved beyond all of Wales' health boards.

The fall in March in patients waiting longer than 36 weeks, down 4,300 Wales-wide and 1,224 in Gwent, should however provide some impetus toward sustained improvement, though history suggests that long waits begin to climb steadily once more as a new financial year begins.

Aneurin Bevan University Health Board has forecast that it should be able to eliminate waits of longer than 36 weeks for treatment in all specialities except orthopaedics by the end of next March, but that achieving the same result for orthopaedics is unlikely before some way into 2016/17.

In the first three months of this year, 450 operating slots were booked for Gwent orthopaedic and cataract patients at an NHS treatment centre in Bristol, as a means of increasing capacity and bringing down the number of long waits.

This has helped with the fall in waits of longer than 36 weeks, and a similar programme is set to happen again this year.

During March, the number of Gwent patients waiting longer than 36 weeks for treatment in Gwent hospitals fell by 1,015, the biggest reductions being in ophthalmology (down 353), orthopaedics (down 284), and oral surgery (down 158).

Reductions were also recorded in cardiology, ENT (ear, nose and throat), general surgery, gynaecology and urology.

There were also sizeable reductions in March in the numbers of Gwent patients who had been waiting longer than 36 weeks for treatment in hospitals in other parts of Wales.

The number waiting for treatment with Cardiff and Vale University Health Board almost halved, to 142, and with Cwm Taf it fell by a third, to 116.