NHS England hospital waiting list jumps by 100,000 in a month
More than 5.8m people were waiting for NHS hospital care in England in September, a rise of 100,000 in a single month, and a jump of more than 1m in a year, according to official data released on Thursday.
The latest figures from NHS England came after a survey by the NHS Confederation, which represents organisations across the healthcare sector, found that nine out of 10 leaders believed the demands on their organisations were “unsustainable”.
The Royal College of Surgeons of England highlighted the “shocking milestone” that 12,491 patients had been waiting more than two years for hospital treatment — including hip and knee replacements, gallbladder removals and hernia operations — a 28 per cent increase on the previous month.
Fiona Myint, college vice-president, said that on the overall waiting list patients were not just waiting for planned surgery but even for “surgical procedures to treat aneurysms and prevent heart attacks”.
Calling for the establishment of “surgical hubs”, to carry out operations uninterrupted by emergency procedures in every part of England, she said patients needed to know “there is a plan taking shape that will improve their situation and have confidence they will soon get a date for their operation”.
The college said 4.35m patients had been waiting for planned surgery a year ago.
The government announced an extra £36bn over three years for health and social care services in September — with the majority initially going to the health service. Matthew Taylor, NHS Confederation chief executive, said that while the extra investment was welcome, “we cannot immediately buy our way out of this potential crisis due to the 90,000 plus vacancies we are carrying in the NHS”.
It would be better to allocate more immediate funding to social care services “as boosting the numbers of care staff will have much greater impact on reducing pressures on hospitals and other parts of the NHS”, he said.
Jonathan Ashworth, shadow health and social care secretary, warned that the coming winter was set to be the most challenging in history for the NHS. “It’s now urgent ministers fix the stalling vaccination programme, resolve the immediate crisis in social care and bring forward a long-term plan to recruit the healthcare staff our NHS now desperately needs, which [chancellor] Rishi Sunak has failed to provide despite imposing a punishing tax rise on working people,” he said.
Earlier the NHS Confederation survey showed that 88 per cent of leaders believed their organisations were facing unsustainable demands. Almost the same number believed a lack of staffing in the NHS as a whole was putting patient safety and care at risk.
The NHS said that emergency 999 services had their busiest ever month in October. Ambulance staff responded to more than 82,000 life threatening call-outs, an increase of more than 20,000 on the previous high for October in 2019.
The BBC reported on Thursday that average wait times for emergency ambulance call-outs for problems such as heart attacks and strokes were nearly three times as long as they should be in England.
Professor Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said: “With the highest number of 999 calls ever answered for a single month, the busiest October on record for major A&E and the rollout of boosters as part of the successful NHS vaccination programme, there is no doubt pressure on the health service remains incredibly high.”
Patients on the waiting list were “prioritised based on their need, and, at the end of September, were waiting an average of less than 12 weeks for elective care, compared to a high of 19.6 weeks on average in July last year”, the NHS said.