Concerns about the NHS were a major issue in the general election in Wales
The election fallout continues.
One of the big questions as we look towards the assembly election will be how Labour tries to neutralise criticism of the way it has been running the NHS.
This was clearly a major factor in some of the seats it lost to the Conservatives in Wales.
Labour says it's not rushing to make any judgements on its approach.
It is clear the line of thinking is to try to take advantage of what it believes is the positive experience of the overwhelming majority of people being treated in the Welsh NHS.
Real data
It says the vast majority of people are satisfied when they come out of hospital, and yet that figure drops if you were to ask the public in the street what they think of the NHS.
So short of getting three million people seen in a casualty ward, the question for Welsh Labour is how to turn that personal experience into a widespread perception?
There is an obvious answer, which is for the NHS to perform better with the regular waiting list figures. In other words, deal with real data rather than perception.
But that is easier said than done. As we've seen in recent years, it's been difficult to achieve sustained improvement and the mass of information makes it hard to condense into a simple message.
Each set of statistics carries its own story.
Target
For example, take the latest quarterly figures on the treatment of those newly diagnosed with cancer via the urgent suspected route.
Strip this away and what we're talking about is the wait someone has between being told by their GP they have cancer and being treated by a consultant.
The target is for 95% of people to be treated in two months. It has not been met since 2008.
For the quarter ending in March this year, 84% of people were seen.
But the Welsh figure here is better than in England. Latest figures from the NHS in England show that 82% of people received treatment within two months.
One senior opposition party member at the assembly told me this is a target that could conceivably be met before the next election.
Different story
Last week another target was released which again revealed a different story.
The number of patients waiting more than two months for a diagnostic test, such as MRI scans and ultrasound, has fallen to its lowest level in almost three years.
The figures for March showed around 11,300 waited that long. In January the figure was more than 20,000.
Diagnostic tests, in particular, have been a problem for the Welsh government.
Previous analysis we've done have revealed a far higher proportion of patients in Wales wait longer than two months for a scan than in England.
The deputy health minister Vaughan Gething has acknowledged that the Welsh government needs to be more effective in communicating its message on the NHS.
Whether it manages to do this will be one of the big stories of the political year sandwiched between the general and assembly elections.
