I sometimes think it's a miracle our Welsh NHS functions at all.

Yesterday @WalesOnline published a story on how many people were discharged from hospital to care homes without a test between Mar 1 and May 31 - broken down by health board.

But that isn't the real story
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All 7 health boards were sent an FoI asking 5 questions:
- How many patients were discharged into care homes
- How many sent to a new home or their previous one
- How many tested prior to discharge
- How many since ID'd as having Covid
- How many died subsequently

What is bizarre about the responses is some (Aneurin Bevan) could answer all 5 questions quickly and easily.

Whereas some could only answer a few.

C&V could only answer the first question. For others they either didn't hold the data or it would cost too much cash to calculate.

This shows there's little continuity of systems and processes across the Welsh NHS.

You have 7 health boards doing things 7 different ways.

This makes analysis across the NHS as whole harder than it needs to be.

In normal times this is bad - in a pandemic it is deadly.

We saw this earlier in the pandemic when it was revealed that two health boards were not even using the expensive computer system designed to record deaths.

Betsi Cadwaladr and Hywel Dda university health boards failed to report 85 and 31 Covid-19 deaths respectively.

In a pandemic it is vital to be able to move resources from one area to where they are needed. It should be one of the great advantages of having united NHS.

For example, to move an IT worker from one health board to another, you'll need to complete payroll new starter form with bank details, new holiday year etc. Just to go from Aneurin Bevan to Cardiff.

The different organisations.
You may as well be moving from Tesco to Sainsburys

We have 7 health boards to cover a population similar to the size of Greater Manchester.

Two years ago I conducted this investigation that suggested the Welsh NHS didn't really know how many nurses it employed: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/great-mystery-wales-missing-nurses-14936268

This is not to denigrate the people working day to day in our health service. They are heroes. It is only because they are so dedicated that the system works at all.

But it must be like wading through treacle to try and manage this.

But it is a real concern that we don't have uniform systems and data collection across a small country.

What you can measure you can manage and if you can’t measure how can you possibly manage?