We’ve turned a corner, says NHS board chief

WAITING lists have fallen to less than 100,000 for NHS procedures at Newcastle’s hospitals for the first time since August 2022.

It comes as the region’s NHS bosses have spoken about how the battle to bring down waiting lists has seen them “turn a corner”, both when it comes to raw numbers, and those who have been waiting for longer than a year for treatment.

The waiting lists in Newcastle – and around the North East – have been trending downwards since hitting a peak last October.

However, nationally, there are still an estimated 7.54 million treatments waiting to be carried out, according to NHS England figures covering up until the end of February.

As people could be waiting for more than one procedure, that is estimated to relate to 6.29m patients. This is down slightly on January.

In Newcastle, there are now 99,026 outstanding waits – and just over two-thirds of those people have been waiting for less than 18 weeks. Now, there are 3,477 waits longer than a year, which has again fallen month-on-month, from more than 4,000 in January.

Across the North East’s five acute hospital trusts – County Durham and Darlington, South Tyneside and Sunderland, Northumbria Healthcare, Gateshead Health and Newcastle Hospitals – there are now a total of 250,597 treatments waiting to take place.

That is marginally down on January’s figures – but more than 10,000 down on October last year, though much of that reduction is at the Newcastle trust.

As the Newcastle trust is a specialist regional centre for a range of complex procedures, there are some specialities such a spinal surgery which, since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, proved particularly tricky to bring down waiting lists in.

Speaking about progress made bringing down waiting lists, Samantha Allen, chief executive of the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board – which commissions services from our hospitals – told that board’s last meeting she was “delighted” by progress made.

She said: “I feel like we’ve turned a corner and the corner we’ve turned [with] those elective procedures is where we have fewer people now waiting.”

She said it “certainly bodes well” for the future as the NHS continues its recovery from the impact of Covid-19.

Reacting to last week’s national figures, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “A drop of almost 200,000 in the last five months shows what the NHS can do for patients.”

Samantha Allen