NHS patients to get fast-track surgery if wait exceeds six months

ANY patient forced to wait six months for surgery must be offered faster treatment elsewhere, under new NHS plans.

The Health Secretary pledged to give patients “more power and greater choice” over where operations, such as hip surgery, were carried out, while forcing down record waiting lists.

Latest figures show more than 4.15million patients are on waiting lists – including more than half a million patients waiting more than 18 weeks. The total figure is a 66 per cent rise from the 2.5million waiting in 2011.

Successive governments have pledged that patients referred to hospital should be offered a choice of provider, including private hospitals.

Ministers have said such policies offer patients more rights, while giving hospitals an incentive to keep waiting lists down, as they receive income for each case treated. But research has suggested that many GPs are not routinely offering such options, with latest poll showing just four in 10 patients reported being given a choice of hospital.

The new promise, contained in NHS planning guidance for 2019-20, says hospitals or local planning bodies will now be obliged to contact patients who have been on lists for six months to advise them about quicker alternatives.

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said: “I want people to have more power and greater choice to get NHS care that’s right for them. Nobody should have to wait longer than necessary for treatment, so the NHS is offering greater flexibility so patients receive quicker access to treatment in the best possible settings.”

The guidance states: “For 2019-20 new arrangements must be put in place so that anyone who has been waiting

for six months or longer must be contacted … and given the option of faster treatment at an alternative provider.”

Since Mr Hancock took up post in the summer, he has pushed trusts to eliminate all waits of longer than a year.

The new guidance commits to doing this by March of next year, with fines of £2,500 for every patient that has to wait longer, until the rules change. Latest statistics show more than 2,400 patients have waited at least a year, the highest November figure since 2011.

The Government’s target says 92 per cent of patients should be treated within 18 weeks. But this has not been achieved for almost three years, with just 87.3 per cent of patients treated within this timescale in November.

The guidance follows publication of a long-term plan for the NHS, launched by Theresa May, which sets out how a £20.5billion spending boost will be employed. The blueprint says that over the next decade, smartphone consultations will replace most hospital and GP appointments under plans to make the NHS a “digital first” operation.

The new plan says that within five years, up to 30 million hospital appointments – one in three – should be scrapped, with Skype consultations or smartphone monitoring instead.

And within a decade, digital consultations are expected to become the default option, relieving pressures on hospitals, the new strategy says.

Ministers say the move is more convenient for patients, and cheaper for hospitals. But patients’ groups have questioned how the elderly and vulnerable would cope with such heavy reliance on technology.

The detailed guidance for the next financial year says that by this March, waiting lists should be back to the position they achieved last March. This would mean a list no greater than 3.84million, compared with the latest figures of 4.15million.

Latest statistics show 18,000 more patients were treated within 18 weeks, compared with a year ago.