Coronavirus impact on hospital appointments
Disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic led to nearly 200,000 fewer outpatient appointments in Sunderland and South Tyneside last year, new figures show.
NHS Digital data shows South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust still managed to deliver 1,033,145 appointments in the year to March – 197,290 fewer (16%) on the previous year, when 1,230,435 were scheduled.
The figures also show that about75%oftheappointments booked went ahead, but 14% were cancelled by the Trust – which runs Sunderland Royal Hospital – with the remainder either not attended or cancelled by the patient.
Dr Sean Fenwick, director ofoperationsattheTrust,said: “Covid-19 had a significant impact on non-urgent hospital services last year and unfortunately like many other Trusts across the country, we had to take the very difficult decision to postpone or cancel a small percentage of outpatient appointments to allow us to cope with the influx of Covid-19 admissionsandtomaintainstrict infection, prevention and control measures.
“Our teams have worked tirelessly to provide more than 771,000 outpatient appointments throughout this timeframe and rapidly deployed telephone and virtual appointments to ensure we could continue to provide care and advice.
"Thevastmajorityofourpatientswerehappywiththisapproach
and we want people to know that the NHS is still very much here for them and we have robust processes in place to keep our patients safe when they come into our hospitals and clinics.”
Nationally outpatient appointments fell by 18% to 101.9 million.
SarahScobie,deputydirector of research at the Nuffield Trust, said the number of outpatientappointmentspartially recoveredduringthesummer, but ongoing infection control measures meant the NHS was still struggling to see as many patients as it did pre-pandemic.