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Showing results for tags 'Long waiting list'.
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Content ArticleOver the past year, delays in transferring patients from an ambulance to a hospital have risen exponentially. In April 2022 there were over 41,000 delays of over 60 minutes, up over a staggering 450 per cent in 12 months. This equates to 71,000 hours lost, with a significant risk of harm to patients, even though the proportion being taken to hospital by ambulance has fallen thanks to successful initiatives such as “hear and treat” and “see and treat”. These delays mean that, too often, ambulance crews are not able to respond to 999 calls from critically ill patients. Instead they are being held in “stacks” of hundreds each day – as ambulance control room teams strive to prioritise overstretched resources. The current reality is that crews are often waiting with patients in hospital corridors or outside, hearing urgent calls to which they are unable to respond. In addition to the direct impact on patients, this is incredibly demoralising, even traumatising, for many staff involved. So why is this happening? In an article for the Independent, Daren Mochrie, chair of AACE – the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, and Saffron Cordrey, interim chief executive at NHS Provider, discusses what is happening in the NHS.
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Content ArticleThis report by researchers at the University of Birmingham is the first granular analysis of the known and hidden waiting lists for elective procedures in England. There has been previous analysis of the NHS waiting list, but it has been based on the overall waiting list and has included patients waiting for all types of consultant-led care, including outpatient clinic visits and non-surgical treatments. The authors of this report have used procedure-level data to produce estimates for the need for elective procedures.
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Content ArticleThis report examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on people living with long-term conditions and highlights that many have deteriorated faster than usual due to being unable to access rehabilitation services. It makes recommendations to the government aimed at restoring rehabilitation support services. The report was produced collaboratively by The Alzheimer's Society, The Stroke Association, Macmillan Cancer Support, The Centre for Mental Health, Age UK, The College of Podiatry, The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, The Royal College of Occupational Therapists, The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and The British Dietetic Association.
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Content Article
HealthWatch - How can you find an NHS dentist? (6 May 2022)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Dentist
Growing numbers of people are reporting being unable to make an appointment with an NHS dentist. This article by HealthWatch offers advice on how to find an NHS dentist and what to do if you can't find a dentist accepting new patients. It provides information on what to do in a dental emergency and about the cost of NHS dentistry. -
Content Article
Waiting Lists Tracker
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Suggest a useful website
Get information on waiting times for treatment at NHS Trusts in England. This data is sourced from NHS England, and is published two months in arrears. Please note that some data may not be available. This could be because a) the Trust does not provide treatment for the selected condition, b) data has not been submitted, or c) some services (e.g. mental health) are not covered in the source data. -
Content ArticleEmergency Department (ED) patient waiting times provide an important barometer for the wider pressures experienced in the NHS. There are currently alarming levels of crowding in our EDs, indicating that the health service is unable to meet the needs of patients with the current level of resource and capacity. In March 2022, for the first time in the history of the metric, the numbers of patients waiting 12-hours or more from decision to admit (DTA) exceeded 20,000. However the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) argue that this number represents the tip of iceberg, as far greater numbers of patients experience extreme waits of 12 hours or more from their time of arrival. To investigate this issue further, RCEM carried out a Freedom of Information (FOI) request examining the extent of very long stays in EDs, with a particular focus on the numbers of patients waiting 12 hours or more from their time of arrival. They found that the current 12-hour data is a gross underrepresentation of the reality of patient waits, as it fails to capture the vast majority of patients who have no choice but to spend extended lengths of time in EDs. It additionally conceals the patients who are discharged home after very long stays.
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Content ArticleShared decision making and regular communication throughout a patient’s surgery pathway would, a recent HSJ webinar argued, help the NHS move from the concept of waiting lists to one of preparation lists – and to a better way of dealing with the backlog. Claire Read reports.
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Content ArticleMore must be done to avoid harm to patients while waiting for treatment. The backlog for planned care is one of the biggest challenges for the NHS in Wales. Waiting times targets have not been met for many years. This backlog has been made much worse due to the pandemic. In February 2022, there were nearly 700,000 patients waiting for planned care, a 50% increase since February 2020. Over half of the people currently waiting have yet to receive their first outpatient appointment which means that they may not know what they’re suffering from and their care cannot be effectively prioritised. Modelling shows it could take up to seven years or more to return waiting lists to pre-pandemic levels. This report makes five recommendations based on what the Welsh Government needs to do as it implements its national plan.
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Content ArticleSince 2010/11, the NHS has lost almost 25,000 beds across the UK. The evolving nature of healthcare provision means that the role of hospital admission has changed, but hospital beds still represent an essential part of healthcare, and the number available to the NHS should be carefully considered. A broad consensus has developed in recent years that the reduction in beds has happened too quickly. The outcome is that the NHS is now under-bedded. This has important consequences; patients must now endure long waits to be admitted with emergency department staff providing care normally provided in wards even as they continue to care for new arrivals; ambulance handover delays increase and there are delays to calls for an ambulance; planned operations are cancelled. Reducing long stays in emergency departments requires adequate staffing, space, efficient processes, and sufficient inpatient bed capacity. This report from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) focuses on inpatient bed capacity. While the unit of measurement is a bed, it must be remembered that a bed requires medical, nursing and other staff to safely function.
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Content ArticleNext Steps is a tool created by the Dementia Change Action Network to help patients find the right support, at the right time, while waiting for their memory assessment appointment. Some patients are facing longer waits as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it can be an uncertain time. Next Steps provides information about what to expect from the memory assessment process and about organisations who can help.
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Content ArticleSean Mansell had a medical history of alcohol dependence syndrome. On the 5 July 2021, the West Midlands Ambulance Service received a 999 call at 19.23 hours from a neighbour of who reported that Shaun couldn't walk. The call was allocated a category 3 disposition which had a target response time frame of 120 minutes. An ambulance arrived on scene at 03.38 on the 6 July which was 8 hours and 15 minutes later and not within the response time frame. This was due to the fact that demand outstripped available resources. A welfare call was undertaken at 21.28 hours by a paramedic who had been asked to go into the control room to assist with welfare calls due to the high volume of 999 calls outstanding. The paramedic had not received prior training on how to complete these calls. The welfare call was conducted with the neighbour. No contact was made directly with Shaun during the 8 hour delay which led to a missed opportunity to identify a change in his condition. When the ambulance arrived, Shaun had passed away on the sofa in his front room. There was evidence of blood loss on the floor next to him and around his mouth. The police did not find any suspicious circumstances. A post mortem examination found the cause of death to be acute gastrointestinal haemorrhage and liver disease due to chronic alcoholism. The medical evidence was not able to determine if the delay in the arrival of the ambulance contributed to the death because there was no certainty of timeline about the bleeding.
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Content ArticleExpanding workforce capacity, and allowing staff to recover, is going to be fundamental in achieving the ambitions set out in the elective recovery delivery plan. To help support, protect and retain staff, this letter from NHS England details a number of high impact enablers that providers should consider implementing to help improve staff experience. It also sets out a number actions being taken forward at a national level with the aim of making the workload more sustainable for staff.
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Content ArticleTherese Coffey, the new health and social care secretary, sets out the government’s plans for the NHS and social care to deliver for patients, this winter and next. The government's plan for patients sets out the priorities for health and care, delivering across four key areas: ambulances backlogs care doctors and dentists. Read her Ministerial foreword below.
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Content ArticleThis instalment of Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM)’s Acute Insight Series summarises key issues in mental health emergency care and provides recommendations for policymakers, NHS England, Integrated Care Systems, and Trusts to enable patients to access emergency mental healthcare in a safe, efficient, and timely manner.
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Content ArticleThis letter from NHS Confederation to Thérèse Coffey MP, the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, sets out what needs to be done to support the delivery of an emergency winter plan for health and social care services. It outlines the views of NHS Confederation members on what will be needed to deliver the ‘ABCD’ highlighted as priorities by the Secretary of State: ambulances, backlogs, care and doctors and dentists.
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Content ArticleThe NHS Confederation, NHS Providers, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, National Voices and the Richmond Group of Charities have penned a joint letter to the new Prime Minister warning that without urgent action on key priorities the NHS risks being trapped in a relentless cycle unable to meet rising patient need and demand. The five organisations, which together represent NHS leaders, clinicians and patients, are calling on the new government to take rapid action to address five key priorities in the short term. These priorities are: Workforce Social care Capital funding The impact of the cost of living crisis and inflation Strengthening the voice of people living with ill health in decision making.
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Content ArticleNHS England have released statistics on referral to treatment (RTT) waiting times for consultant-led elective care. The statistics include patients waiting to start treatment at the end of July 2022 and patients who were treated during July 2022.
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Content ArticleIn a television studio in Stoke-on-Trent last month, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak traded blows over everything from credit card economics to Channel migrants to the accessories chain Claire’s. The list of issues the pair clashed over was dizzyingly long. There was one glaring omission, however. In the hour-long debate there was not a single mention of the NHS – despite being engulfed in its biggest ever crisis. The NHS now shares the same traits as many of those relying upon it to keep them alive and well: it is elderly, has multiple comorbidities, and is in dire need of emergency care. Summer has left it on its knees. Worse is expected this winter. “The new prime minister will inherit an NHS in its worst state in living memory,” says Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. “There is no escaping that the NHS is in a state of crisis.”
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Content Article“I will deliver on the National Health Service” was as much detail as the new prime minister offered on health policy in her victory speech on Monday. One idea floated during her campaign, that £13bn of new funding earmarked for the NHS should be diverted to social care, might once have won plaudits. But such is the crisis now engulfing hospitals that the moment has passed. Next week, a ballot opens that could see nurses in England and Wales go on strike for the first time. A record 132,139 – or almost 10% of all NHS posts – were vacant in June. This shocking rise in the number of NHS vacancies is a symptom of the government’s dangerous neglect, says the Guardian newspaper in its Editorial.
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Content ArticleThe pandemic has had an enormous impact on health and care services in the UK. In this article, Nuffield Trust fellows Jessica Morris and Sarah Reed take a closer look at access and waiting times before and after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. They highlight that before the pandemic, pressure on the system was already reducing access to NHS services and making waiting times longer. Covid-19 has made the situation significantly worse due to the need for heightened infection control practices, rising levels of staff sickness and burnout, the cancellation of routine care and redirection of staff. Enabling services to recover will be challenging given these ongoing pressures and real-term budget cuts for the NHS this year. The article examines the impact of the pandemic on waiting times relating to: General practice Elective (planned) care Diagnostic testing Cancer care A&E Ambulance
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Content ArticleMaking the Patient Tracking List (PTL) available to general practice in North Central London (NCL) is proving to be an effective approach. When thinking about how best to address the backlog of patients, it’s natural to only consider the locations where the patients will be treated, but Amy Bowen, director of system improvement for NCL, says her team saw the value of involving primary care in the conversation. “Initially, everyone considered the PTL from secondary care, but we thought ‘let’s flip it on its head’,” she says. The approach uses funding from the NHS’s elective accelerator sites initiative to form multi-disciplinary Proactive Integrated Teams (PITs) that can access the PTL using the elective recovery dashboard in the Cerner population health platform, HealtheIntent®. Find out more in this article in the Integrated Care Journal.
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Content ArticleThis article in The Guardian aims to explain the major pressures the NHS will face in Autumn 2022. It identifies and explores the following threats: Covid Influenza Cost of living crisis Workforce shortages Pay
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Content ArticleIn this blog for The King's Fund, Richard Murray examines the issues that are pushing the NHS into crisis and causing the lowest levels of public satisfaction since the 1990s. The primary cause of this emergency is the workforce crisis, an existing trend that has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. He examines the approaches that have been taken to similar crises in the past, and highlights the importance of the workforce plan that is due to be released by NHS England and Health Education England towards the end of the year.
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Content Article
NHS Scotland waiting times
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Dashboards and presentations of data
Information on waiting times for local health boards and specialties in Scotland. This site shows information on waiting times for planned (elective) care. This site does not show information for emergency (unscheduled) care. The statistics shown here relate only to any treatment as an inpatient or day case covered by the Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG). A small number of specialist treatments are not covered by the TTG. -
Content ArticleAs dentists hand back their NHS contracts in record numbers, GPs are seeing the impact on their workload and patients’ health, especially in “dental deserts,” reports Sally Howard in this BMJ article. Over one week this spring, 20 patients presented at GP Abbie Brooks’ York surgery with abscesses, dental pain, and broken teeth—demanding antibiotics and painkillers. Brooks could not prescribe because she was not indemnified to perform dental work. Many of these patients, Brooks says, were not registered with a dentist or able to find an NHS dentist, and had already been told to call 111. The NHS medical helpline had advised patients to visit emergency NHS dentists 50 miles away from Brooks’ surgery. “Vulnerable patients often can’t get to emergency dentist appointments in Bradford or Leeds for logistical or financial reasons,” she says, adding that a small proportion of patients became difficult when Brooks was unable to help. “One woman was really quite angry that I wouldn’t incise and drain her abscess,” she says. “It’s not acceptable for GPs to have to deal with this crisis not of our doing.”
