A SENEDD member who represents the Monmouthshire area has raised concerns on online healthcare in Wales.

Laura Ann Jones MS has suggested that the focus on online doctors appointments over face-to-face ones has been a contributing factor to the congestion at A&E services.

In a question to Eluned Morgan MS, minister for health and social services, she said: "What I want to ask you today, minister, is specifically about GPs and supporting face-to-face appointments, as opposed to online ones, because if we tackle that, then that will obviously help the ambulance service by brining down the numbers presented at A&E. What is becoming apparent -- more and more from the cases I’m receiving -- is that symptoms are being missed, and those people are then presenting themselves to A&E and contributing to the A&Es being clogged up and the adverse affect that that’s having."

Eluned Morgan MS responded: "I think we’ve got to be straight with the public, we are not going back to the way we were pre-pandemic. We have introduced new digital services and frankly, a lot of the public like them. A lot of people like e-prescribing and certainly that is the response that we are getting in the many surveys that we’re carrying out. Of course, there will always be a time when some patients need to be seen face-to-face and this is a clinical judgement that our GPs are making every day."

She added that general practitioners are the people best place as to determine when face-to-face meetings are necessary rather than what the UK parliament secretary of state for health and social care, Sajid Javid, is doing and telling GPs that they need to go back to only face-to-face meetings.