City must wait ‘ years, not months’ for reduced hospital waiting times

BRINGING DOWN waiting times for appointments at Hull hospitals, which are the longest in Yorkshire, will take “years, not months” as coronavirus continues to impact services, health professionals have said.

Representatives of the NHS, including from Hull University Teaching Hospitals Trust and the East Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group ( CCG), told councillors coronavirus had had an “appalling” impact on waiting times.

The latest NHS England figures on waiting times showed there were 56,554 incomplete ‘‘ pathways’’, including procedures and treatment, at the Hull Trust as of August.

Of those waits, 59.4 per cent or 33,593 were longer than 18 weeks, the NHS’s target for waiting times. East Riding Council’s Health, Care and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee heard the trust was considering putting temporary operating theatres on hospital sites to perform particular treatment to clear backlogs.

Hull University Teaching Hospitals Trust Chief Executive Chris Long said: “The challenge is complex, but the reason we’ve got bigger waiting lists is because we’re bigger than most other trusts around us. We also offer a range of services like for strokes and oncology that others wouldn’t offer.”

He said: “We’re working with the York Trust to pool waiting lists and resources to deal with those in priorities three and four as quickly as possible.

“For example we’ve looked at facilities that are less busy like Bridlington.” He said “we’re talking about a process that’s going to take years, not months” to bring the situation under control.