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Wales' top politician has admitted he "agonised" over splitting up a health board stuck in special measures because of continual management failures.

Professor Mark Drakeford, speaking exclusively to North Wales Live, revealed the ongoing problems with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board were constantly under review.

The First Minister said he had considered carefully whether to split the board up and admitted it would still be a possibility if the conditions were right.

The health board was put into special measures by Professor Drakeford in June 2015 after problems with neo-natal intensive care services and the release of a damning report into care on Tawel Fan dementia ward.

Both units were at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Bodelwyddan.

Initially the special measures, the most serious form of Welsh Government intervention that can applied to a health board, were supposed to last 18 months.

After numerous missed targets and damning reports into both adult mental health provision and the finances of the organisation, it is approaching its fifth year without any signs of the management crisis abating.

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Prof Drakeford said: "When I was health board minister I agonised whether the answer to Betsi was to break it back up - put it into three, put it into two.

"The question you've got to ask yourself is whether, with all the challenges Betsi faces, are you going to help those challenges by putting it through another reorganisation or not.

"The conclusion we come back to is another reorganisation, where people are inevitably focused not on patients, on the internal arrangements of the board, I remain convinced that that would be a barrier to progress.

"We keep it under review all the time. If we thought the answer to Betsi's problems was a reorganisation we wouldn't stand back from doing it. Like I said I've stared at it and stared at it, and I've talked and talked to people."

He added: "It's not a question we have parked and forgotten. We're bound to look at it because when you're up here people raise it with you all the time."

Prof Drakeford said he put the board into special measures because of the row over maternity services and the inability of the organisation to "have a conversation with the public".

(Image: Eye Imagery)

Then CEO of Betsi Trevor Purt's role was sacrificed although he remained on a £200,000 salary for a further 12 months while he worked for an English health trust. It was labelled a "secondment".

Prof Drakeford said: "The leadership of the board at that time had fallen out of...their attempt to have a conversation with the public had gone badly wrong.

"First thing to say is those people left. So people have gone as a result of those failings in Betsi and maternity services in Betsi are not in special measures, they are in a much better place than they were then."

(Image: Hadyn Iball / Daily Post Wales)

He pointed to GP services as having stabilised, although he conceded not at a level people would be happy with. GP trainee places, he said, were full for the first time in a while but he argued it would take time for those people to get through the system and make a difference.

He added: "I understand the position Betsi is in means people are always going to be anxious about things and there are still genuine difficulties in some departments and in financial management."