Non-urgent surgery waiting times to grow
Waiting times for patients in need of hip and knee operations will grow as cash-strapped hospitals prioritise A&E and cancer services, the NHS has admitted. Health service leaders yesterday accepted that the government target that nine out of 10 patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks for non-emergency operations would be widely missed until well into 2018, having not been met since February last year.
WAITING times for patients in need of hip and knee operations will grow as cash-strapped hospitals prioritise A&E and cancer services, the NHS has admitted.
Health service leaders yesterday accepted that the government target that nine out of 10 patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks for non-emergency operations would be widely missed until well into 2018, having not been met since February last year.
Doctors’ leaders said the 18-week target has been “jettisoned in all but name”. However, the NHS denied the policy was being formally dropped.
Announcing the NHS’s strategy over the next two years, Simon Stevens, chief executive, said an expected rise in waiting times for routine procedures, which also include cataract removal, hernia operations and laparoscopies, was a “trade off ” for improvement in other areas, such as hit- ting the four-hour A&E target, better cancer care and mental health services.
The Government was criticised this winter when it emerged January was the worst month on record for A&E departments, with more patients than ever waiting longer than the four-hour target.
Mr Stevens said yesterday said he aimed to “get the patient experience of A&E back on track” as soon as possible.
“We do expect, and we say here, that there is a trade-off, we do expect that there will be some marginal lengthening of waiting lists,” he said, adding that waiting times for routine surgery still compared favourably to 20 years ago.
“It’s a long-standing principle of medicine that you treat the patients with the most urgent need first. That’s the principle that we’re applying here.”
The two-year blueprint also revealed hundreds of thousands of patients would no longer be referred to a consultant by their GP.
Family doctors will instead be encouraged to phone consultants to ask for advice, while other measures will be put in place to cut the number of people needing to be sent to hospital for care.
As part of the new framework, funding for hospitals will now be dependent on the efforts staff make to persuade drink and drug users to seek treatment while they are on the premises.
“There is going to be an incentive for hospitals to have a quiet word because the evidence shows that if you’ve had a heart attack or are in hospital for something, that’s actually the moment when people are willing to think about making changes to their lifestyle,” said Mr Stevens.