Welsh Endometriosis Centres Risk Losing Accreditation — SkimNews
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- Kelly O'Shea, 32, paid £20,000 privately after waking from at least two planned endometriosis surgeries in Wales to find a bowel specialist unavailable or theatre time cut short for an urgent case.
- Cardiff and Vale health board added its specialist endometriosis centre to its risk register, citing new BSGE criteria requiring named gynaecologists, specialist nurses, colorectal surgeons, urologists and radiologists with time dedicated in their rotas at least six times a year.
- Endometriosis surgeons at the Cardiff and Vale centre told a cross-party Senedd group that without more theatre time and dedicated multidisciplinary support, individual surgeons cannot meet minimum caseload thresholds for BSGE reaccreditation.
- The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists urged the Welsh government to commit to sustainable resourcing of gynaecology services, including adequate workforce numbers, staff training and appropriate facilities across the country.
- Delyth Jewell MS, deputy minister for women's health, said the current setup is "not sustainable" and that she wants to explore a regional or nationally commissioned service rather than leaving endometriosis care to individual health boards' goodwill.
- A petition demanding action to save the Cardiff and Vale endometriosis centre has gathered more than 11,000 signatures.
- About one in 10 women has endometriosis; roughly 40% are referred to hospital gynaecology teams, and complex cases in south Wales are routed to one of two BSGE-accredited centres while north Wales cases are sent to Liverpool or Chester.
Why it matters: If Cardiff and Vale loses BSGE accreditation, complex endometriosis patients across south Wales would be referred to England at a higher cost to NHS Wales — the scenario surgeon Lutfi Shamsuddin explicitly warned against at the Senedd meeting. NHS Wales's joint commissioning committee discussed endometriosis as a potential national service in June 2024 but allocated no new investment for 2026-27, leaving individual health boards responsible for care clinicians say cannot be sustained on goodwill alone.
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