Covid’s ‘brutal impact’ on hospital waiting lists

SOARING waiting lists and plummeting numbers of people receiving treatment show the ‘brutal impact’ COVID-19 has had on the NHS.

Across hospitals serving Greater Manchester, there were 79,861 people on the waiting list for elective treatments, such as hip and knee operations, at the end of April.

That was a 28 per cent jump in a month, from 62,273 in March, and more than double the 34,021 waiting in April last year.

The NHS cancelled all non-urgent surgeries for three months from April 15, although individual trusts made decisions to stop some treatments in March.

The number of people waiting more than a year for treatment has rocketed from 143 in March to 749 in April.

The number of people waiting more than six weeks for key diagnostic tests, such as MRIs, CT scans and colonoscopies, was eight times higher in April than in March.

That was an increase from 2,904 people to 23,486 in just a month.

The number of people waiting more than three months also rose rapidly – from 514 to 1,737.

Tests and procedures being carried out plummeted, down from 95,854 in April 2019 to 33,830 in April this year.

The number of people seeing a consultant after an urgent cancer referral from their GP also fell dramatically in April to 4,777, compared to 10,561 in April 2019.

GPs had been asked in March to prioritise particularly urgent referrals and downgrade or avoid referrals where possible.

There were also drops in the number of people starting treatment – down from 615 in April 2019 to 548 in April this year for those who had been referred urgently, and from 1,284 to 1,101 for those not urgently referred.

Doctors have expressed concerns people with serious conditions have been put off attending A&E due to COVID-19 fears.

The number of A&E attendances had dropped to 55,342 in April, before recovering slightly in May to a total of 74,204 – but they are still down compared to 123,367 visits in April last year.

BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: “These NHS performance figures lay bare the brutal impact of COVID-19 on our healthcare services and patient care. “They show only the early weeks of the pandemic but nonetheless, they confirm the fears of doctors that significant numbers of patients will not have received the care needed and that their conditions could have worsened. “The shocking drop in the number of GP referrals for cancer treatment – down 60pc from last year, and GP referrals to specialist care – down three quarters from last year, is incredibly concerning. “The staggering reduction in patients attending A&E is of great concern, meaning that patients with emergencies are not being treated at a time when overall excess mortality in the UK is among the highest in

Europe.” He said two-thirds of doctors who had responded to a BMA survey had little or no confidence that expected demand could be properly managed.

Across England, there were 1.13m people who had been on NHS waiting lists for more than 18 weeks at the end of April – a jump by almost a third in a month. There were also 468,622 people who have been waiting for more than six weeks for key diagnostic tests – 55.7pc of the waiting list – up from 85,446 in March.

Those waiting to see a consultant after an urgent cancer referral also face longer waits – 88pc waited less than two weeks in April, the lowest proportion since records began in October 2009.

However, this was on top of a huge drop in referrals – down from 181,873 in March to 79,573 in April.

Lynda Thomas, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “The pandemic has wreaked havoc on cancer care, with 2,500 fewer people starting vital treatment to save, extend or improve their lives and a staggering 130,000 fewer seeing a specialist for suspected cancer after an urgent GP referral, than we would expect under normal circumstances.”

Increase in people waiting for elective treatments from March to April