Thousands wait more than a year for surgery
Knock-on effects from pandemic still being felt in hospitals
THOUSANDS of people across the West Midlands have been waiting more than a year for operations, while only around half of cancer patients are starting treatment within the recommended two-month period of being referred.
There were a record 6.1 million people waiting for elective treatment, such as knee and hip operations, at NHS hospitals in England in January.
Just 62.8 per cent of people on the list had been waiting less than 18 weeks, the worst performance since February 2008.
And there are thousands in the West Midlands with no idea when they might finally be called for longawaited treatment.
It was recently revealed University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust, which runs Queen Elizabeth Hospital and several others in and around the city, had the longest waiting list in the country. However, it is one the largest Trusts in the UK.
Latest data showed 171,233 people were on the waiting list at the end of January, including 29,993 waiting over a year and 2,026 over two years.
Just 27 per cent of cancer patients at UHB – less than a third – were beginning cancer treatment within 62 days. Patients were also kept waiting a long time in parts of the Black Country.
Some 2,029 people had been waiting for surgery for more than a year at Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT), which runs New Cross Hospital. The figure was 1,820 at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust (SWB), 827 at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust and 744 Dudley Group NHS Trust. Less than half of cancer patients – 44 per cent – at RWT were beginning treatment in two months. It was 53 per cent at SWB, 59 per cent at Dudley Group and 62 per cent at Walsall Healthcare.
The pandemic has seen waiting lists hit record highs, with the amount of time patients can expect to wait also rapidly increasing. NHS trusts have been routinely missing cancer treatment targets, both before and during the pandemic.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) accused the Government of having “overseen years of decline” in surgery and cancer care and said it needed a better plan for how it would achieve better outcomes for patients.
Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the PAC, said: “We on PAC are now extremely concerned that there is no real plan to turn a large cash injection, for elective care and capital costs of dangerously crumbling facilities, into better outcomes for people waiting for life-saving or quality-oflife improving treatment.”
The DHSC said the pandemic had put unprecedented pressures on healthcare and the department was tackling it head on. A spokesman
said: “We have set out our action plan to deal with the Covid backlog and deliver long-term recovery and reform, backed by a record multibillion-pound investment over the next three years, and our Ten-Year Plan on cancer.
“We are clear business as usual is not enough. That’s why we are delivering new surgical hubs and another 100 community diagnostic centres providing an extra nine million scans, checks and procedures by 2025.”