Patients ‘at risk’ from growing NHS waits

MORE PEOPLE THAN EVER AWAITING APPOINTMENTS

PATIENT care and wellbeing are being put at risk by the evergrowing NHS waiting list in Wales, it is claimed.

Latest monthly data from the Welsh Government shows that more people than ever before are awaiting some form of non-urgent treatment on the health service.

In December 2021 there were 683,331 people on the waiting list – a rise from the 682,279 recorded in November and way up on the 456,809 seen just before the pandemic hit in March 2020.

However, it must be noted that the overall waiting list increased by just 0.2% between November and December, the lowest rise since the start of the pandemic.

More than a third (244,331) of people currently on an NHS Wales waiting list have been on it for nine months or more, up on the 241,667 recorded the month before. In comparison there were only 28,294 waiting this long in March 2020.

The largest number of patients currently waiting are for trauma and orthopaedic surgery (97,706), general surgery (84,698), ear, nose and throat (56,163), and urology (41,168).

The Welsh Government wants 95% of patients to wait less than six months (26 weeks) and no-one to wait nine months (36 weeks) from referral to treatment. But when it made the decision to cancel all non-urgent outpatients and appointments to focus on Covid cases in March 2020 these waiting lists skyrocketed.

Median waiting times for that same month in Wales are more than double that of England (23.2 weeks, compared to 10), while one in four Welsh patients are waiting over a year for treatment compared to only one in 19 in England.

Meanwhile, Welsh Ambulance Service figures for January showed that barely half (52.5%) of immediately life-threatening “Red” calls were reached within the target time of eight minutes. While this is well below the 65% target it was an improvement on the 51.1% recorded in December. The average response time to Red calls was seven minutes and 39 seconds in January, 13 seconds faster than the previous month.

When it came to A&E departments there was also a slight improvement in the four-hour waiting times in January.

Some 68.2% of people spent four hours or less in these units before being admitted, transferred, or discharged in January – up on the 66.5% in December. However, A&E attendances in January were at their lowest level since last March.

Wrexham Maelor Hospital recorded the worst four-hour A&E figures last month with 49.1% followed by Ysbyty Glan Clwyd with 50%. Overall in Wales 8,998 patients waited more than 12 hours in A&E – up on the 8,554 recorded in December – but the target is for no-one to wait that long.

Commenting on the latest NHS performance figures Dr Suresh Pillai, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) in Wales, said: “We know long waits threaten patient safety and may even cause harm or death.

“We are deeply concerned about the current state of the health service in Wales. Without effective action urgent and emergency care will fall deeper into crisis, and the elective care waiting lists will continue to grow.”

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “Thanks to the heroic efforts of our NHS staff we only saw the waiting lists increase by 0.2% in December, the lowest increase since the start of the pandemic, despite the fact that so many staff were diverted to the super-fast rollout of the booster programme during that month.

“Demanding winter pressures, the Omicron wave and the need to support the vaccination programme continued to place considerable strain on the NHS in December 2021.

“These challenges led to the postponement of a number of appointments and planned treatments across Wales and some people were waiting longer for treatment than we would like.

“We have provided £248m so far to support our NHS recovery plan.

“In April we will publish a detailed plan on how we will tackle the waiting times for patients whose treatment has been delayed by the pandemic.”