NHS waiting list hits record high

LONDON: Charities and health organisations have warned of the Covid-19 pandemic’s “catastrophic” impact on NHS services as new figures reveal that the number of people in England waiting to begin hospital treatment has risen to a new record high.

According to data from NHS England, a total of 4.7 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of February 2021 – the highest figure since records began in August 2007.

The number of people waiting more than 52 weeks to start their hospital treatment stood at 387,885 in February 2021 – the highest number for any calendar month since December 2007. A year ago, in February 2020, the number of those having to wait more than 52 weeks to start treatment stood at just 1,613.

Health workers have faced enormous pressures throughout the pandemic, which has pushed up hospital waiting times.

NHS England highlighted that staff had delivered almost two million operations and other elective care in January and February, one of the busiest periods of the pandemic.

It said around two in five of all patients who have received hospital treatment for Covid-19 were admitted in those first two months of the year.

Dr Susan Crossland, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “This data shows pressure is high and growing despite the fall in Covid cases and this was prior to the country starting to come out of lockdown.”

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said the figures showed “how hard trusts are working to recover care backlogs as well as the size of the future challenge they face, despite a decline in Covid-19 patients”.

Figures also showed that the number of people admitted for routine hospital treatment was down 47 per cent in February compared with a year earlier. Some 152,642 patients were admitted for treatment during the month, compared with 285,918 in February 2020.

The year-on-year decrease recorded in January was 54 per cent, while in December 2020 the drop was 25 per cent.

Data shows 1.9 million elective procedures or support for patients took place amid the recent winter surge of Covid-19 infections and there were some 2.6 million A&E visits in that period, NHS England said. Figures also show that 174,624 urgent cancer referrals were made by GPs in February, compared with 190,369 a year before – a year-on-year drop of 8 per cent.

This follows a year-on-year fall of 11 per cent in January but an increase of 7 per cent in December 2020. Urgent referrals where breast cancer symptoms were present – though not initially suspected – were down from 13,627 in February 2020 to 12,199 in February 2021, a fall of 10 per cent.

Meanwhile, almost 330,000 patients had been waiting more than six weeks for a key diagnostic test in February. A total of 327,663 patients were waiting for one of 15 standard tests, including an MRI scan, non-obstetric ultrasound or gastroscopy, NHS England said.

The equivalent number waiting for more than six weeks in February last year was 29,832 and the monthly total peaked at 571,459 in May 2020.

Sara Bainbridge, head of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, said the data “further illustrates the catastrophic impact of Covid-19 on cancer diagnosis and treatment”.

A&E attendances at hospitals last month rose 10 per cent year on year, but this is partly a reflection of the lower-than-usual numbers for March 2020, which were affected by the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

A total of 1.7 million attendances were recorded in March 2021, up from 1.5 million in March 2020, with the equivalent figure for March 2019, a non-pandemic year, being 2.2 million.

Emergency admissions to A&E departments also rose last month, to 503,913 from 427,968 in March 2020.

The year-on-year change will again have been affected by the lower-than-usual numbers for March 2020, and the equivalent figure for March 2019 was 555,457.