One-year waiting list for routine treatment hits record high at North West Anglia Trust

NHS statistics show 1,398 patients had been on the waiting list for 52 weeks or more for elective operations or treatment at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust at the end of August.

This was the highest figure for the month since comparable local records began in 2011 – data for the previous August was unavailable, but in August 2018, just one patient had been delayed as long.

The King’s Fund think tank says there is a “mountain to climb” to tackle delays caused by Covid-19, after NHS data showed more than 100,000 people across England had been waiting at least a year for non-urgent care – the most for more than a decade.

According to NHS rules, patients referred for non-urgent consultant-led elective care should start treatment within 18 weeks.

Across England, the number of people waiting a year or more hit 111,000, a near tenfold increase from 1,236 in August 2019 and the highest figure since 2008.

Of the 32,352 patients waiting for treatment at North West Anglia Trust at the end of August, 47 per cent had been doing so for more than the 18-week window.

The number of patients at the end of August waiting more than 18 weeks for routine treatment at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trust, which provides the area’s physical and mental health services, was far higher than at the same point last year, according to the same survey figures.

NHS statistics show four patients on the waiting list for elective operations or treatment at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust at the end of August had been waiting longer than the 18 week limit.

That was more than a fifth of those on the list, up from just two per cent the previous August, although much can be accounted for by Covid restrictions.

NHS trusts are expected to make sure no more than eight per cent of patients are left waiting beyond the 18-week maximum target.

Across England, 46 per cent of the 4.2 million people waiting at the end of the month had overshot the target time.

This was an improvement on 53 per cent in July, but much higher than the pre-pandemic 15 per cent in August 2019.

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at The King’s Fund, said: “NHS staff are working hard to restore services and find innovative new ways to care for patients, but as these figures show, there is a mountain to climb before waits for routine NHS care return to pre-pandemic levels.

“It now seems unlikely that the highly ambitious targets set for the recovery of NHS performance over autumn will be met, and it is important to be honest with patients and the public about how long people are likely to have to wait for care.”

A combination of the huge treatment backlog, rising Covid-19 hospital admissions, an expected winter surge in demand on services and exhausted and overstretched staff means NHS leaders are “braced for a torrid winter”, he added.

“Much will therefore depend on whether the Government can deliver increased capacity and improvements to the testing system to enable NHS and social care staff to be regularly tested for Covid.”

An NHS spokesman said: “Hospitals are carrying out more than a million routine appointments and operations per week, with around three times the levels of elective patients admitted to hospital than in April, as they continue to make progress on getting services back to pre-Covid levels including scanning services which are delivering millions of urgent checks and tests.

“It is obviously vital for patients that this progress continues, and isn’t jeopardised by a second wave of Covid infections spiralling out of control.”