It has been reported by BBC News this week that a record number of people in England are waiting for NHS hospital treatment.
NHS waiting list figures – June 2021
The June figures show more than 5.45 million people are currently on the waiting list for treatment. Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, has said that the Government would be looking at what more needed to be done for the NHS.
The figures show some positive news, with the numbers of patients waiting more than 18 weeks or a year both coming down. However, there has been a rise in those waiting more than two years.
The data also shows:
- The number of patients waiting to start treatment is the highest it has been since records began in 2007.
- 43 million patients are waiting for procedures, which is an increase from 5.3 million in May.
- Ambulances in England answered more than a million calls in July and the waiting times were the longest since 2017.
- 16 million people were treated in A&E departments in July, a rise from 2.15 million in June.
Professor Stephen Powis of NHS England said that the summer had seen some of the highest numbers of patients coming forward for care.
Hospitals are working hard to reduce the long waits, but the task is substantial.
Some NHS Trusts in England have been provided with extra funding if they can get their volume of work above pre-pandemic levels. However, dealing with new referrals and, perhaps more critically, attempting to tackle the backlogs is no easy feat.
The concern now is that many who didn’t come forward for treatment during the pandemic will now start to do so as the restrictions lift and confidence rises.
The Health Secretary said:
“We estimate there’s probably some seven million people that ordinarily would have come forward to the NHS that stayed away, understandably, during the height of the pandemic. We want those people to come back. I don’t know how many will come back but, even if half of them came to the NHS – and can I just stress I really want people that need to be seen by the NHS to know the NHS is there for them and they should come forward – but as they do I think waiting lists will rise because there will be a huge increase in demand.”
Chris Hopson of NHS Providers said to the BBC that the NHS was doing all it could to try to get through the backlog, but:
“They’re having o cope with the fact that we’re 8,000 beds short compared to the normal number of beds we have because of infection control, and we’ve got large numbers of staff self-isolating. We’re also in the peak leave period and we’ve got very large numbers of people coming in for urgent and emergency care – and we’ve still got 5,000 Covid patients in hospital beds.”
The Royal College of Surgeons said that of the patients waiting more than two years for treatment, most need help with knee or hip replacements, gallbladder removals, or hernia operations, and it warns that some of those patients may be unable to work or carry out day-to-day tasks while they wait for their procedures.
Comment
Clearly, Covid is going to impact the NHS significantly for some time to come, and in different ways, as restrictions continue to ease and more people gain confidence to consider those treatments they were putting off because of the pandemic.
The numbers reported this week are huge and the NHS is already under so much pressure, it is worrying to think about how the NHS can continue to shoulder the strain. It seems that the Government needs to think about longer-term support and funding to help the NHS deal with what’s happening and what’s still to come.
Patient safety is at risk, as is the wellbeing of NHS workers and it needs to be at the top of the list of priorities to help them through to the other side of this.
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Danielle Young is a Senior Associate in our highly regarded Medical Negligence team.
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