Statistics attained by Labour show that roughly 120,695 people died in England while waiting for treatment.
Last year on NHS waiting lists, more than 120,000 people died while waiting for hospital treatment – this figure is a record-high number of deaths and is double the 60,000 patients who died between 2017-2018.
Hospital employers have said that the deaths have highlighted the dangers of patients having to suffer long waits for care and reflect a “decade of underinvestment” which has left hospitals with not enough staff or beds.
Chief Executive, Louise Ansari, said:
“We know that delays to care have significant impacts on people’s lives, putting many in danger.”
The British Medical Association’s Deputy Chair of the Council, Dr Emma Runswick, commented:
“The facilities were a terrible indictment of this government’s mismanagement of our health services.”
Labour discovered out of 138 Health Trusts during 2022, of those 35 (25%) responded showing that 306,11 deaths had happened and that those people were on NHS waiting lists.
Based on the above, estimations suggest that across the whole of England, 120,695 people had died while waiting for hospital care, such as knee or hip replacement.
The Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, said:
“Record numbers of people are spending their final months in pain and agony, waiting for treatment that never arrives. The basic promise of the NHS – that it will be there for us when we need it – has been broken.”
However, NHS England has since criticised the way Labour came to their conclusions and has insisted that they are misleading and unreliable.
A spokesperson for the NHS said:
“This analysis, based on figures from just a quarter of hospital trusts does not demonstrate a link between waits for elective treatment and deaths, and it would be misleading to suggest it does, given the data does not include the cause of death or any further details on the person’s age and medical conditions.”
Groups who represent the doctors had not raised any concerns regarding how accurate the figures are and said the deaths recorded were closely linked to hospitals being under intense pressure as well as a widespread lack of staff that led to waiting lists becoming longer, which is now at 7.6 million people – by far the biggest number on record.
President of the Society for Acute Medicine, Dr Tim Cooksley, has stressed how worrying these figures are for waiting lists and that there is potential for it to hit nine million (predicted by ex-Health Secretary, Sajid Javid).
Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, Matthew Taylor, highlighted how Covid-19 has been a massive factor in some of the estimated deaths (120,695). However, he said the main cause was the fact the NHS did not have enough resources to cope with the demand they were facing.
In England, research by the House of Commons Library for Liberal Democrats shows that hospitals have 2,233 fewer beds compared to 2015, despite the mass increase in patients’ need for care.
Comment
The discovered research shows worrying statistics for the NHS and clearly shows how there is immense pressure on the hospitals.
It is understandable that Covid-19 had a massive play in demanding the need for patient care, however, four years on, the statistics are still incredibly worrying. It is clear there is a lack of staff and resources which is leading to longer waiting lists.
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