Patients in three-year wait for treatment as NHS backlog tops 6m
DOZENS of people have been waiting more than three years for NHS treatment, figures show.
At least 93 have been waiting for three years – and nine for at least four years – according to information released by 69 NHS trusts.
Meanwhile, more than six million patients are caught in the overall mammoth treatment backlog.
Prof Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, described the figures as “shocking”. He said: “Waiting in limbo can cause real emotional and physical distress.
“Unfortunately, we are hearing from our surgeons that Covid-19 continues
to disrupt planned NHS care. This is due to staff being off sick with the virus. Planned operations are also being cancelled because patients have the virus.”
People waiting more than three years will have joined the queue before the pandemic began.
Latest published figures from NHS England show that in January of this year, 23,778 people had been waiting for more than two years – around nine times the figure of 2,608 in April last year.
But once a patient passes that milestone, they are classed as waiting for “two years or over” with no further detail. So freedom of information requests were sent by the PA news agency to 125 acute hospital trusts. Responses from half revealed that 17 of the longest waiters needed trauma and orthopaedic surgery, including hip and knee replacements.
Four were in need of gynaecology services and six for urology care.
One person is thought to have waited four and a half years (235 weeks) for oral surgery at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Trust.
Another patient had waited almost four years (206 weeks) to see an ear, nose and throat specialist at
University Hospitals of Leicester. There were some caveats behind the data, such as patients choosing to delay treatment for personal reasons.
The charity Versus Arthritis warned that hundreds of thousands of patients were waiting in “increasing pain”.
The Government and NHS England have targets to eliminate all waits of more than two years, except when it is the patient’s choice, by July.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “Trusts are doing all they can but they face extraordinary pressures, including the continuing impact of Covid-19.”
NHS Digital data has revealed the busiest GP practices deal with up to 70 times more patients than others.
Hastings Old Surgery, East Sussex, has nearly 15,500 patients for every full-time GP. At Sampford Peverell Surgery,Tiverton, Devon, it’s 218.
The national patient-doctor ratio has jumped from 7,465 in September 2015 to 9,457 in February this year.