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Found 799 results
  1. News Article
    The prospect of waiting at least six weeks for a biopsy was too much for Neil Perkin. In February, the 56-year-old was told that he had suspected prostate cancer which needed to be confirmed by examining a sample of his tissue. “After the initial appointment with the consultant, there were no letters, texts or anything,” Perkin said. Instead, he decided to pay for it himself: £5,000 – a substantial sum for the part-time ferry operator. The results from a private hospital in Guildford confirmed the cancer. “I’d lost faith in the NHS by this point and I went private,” he said. “The cancer was spreading and my surgeon made it clear that if I’d waited for the NHS for my prognosis, [the] chances of cancer recurrence would be far worse.” In May he paid another £22,500 for the prostate to be removed at a private hospital in London, with financial help from his family. “I feel let down. It turned out from the pathology that this was urgent and a delay would have made a huge difference to my outcome, my prognosis and quality of life. They got there in the nick of time.” Portsmouth Hospitals University Trust said it was sorry to have been unable to meet Perkin’s expectations and strived to provide quality and timely care. “But we recognise that across the NHS there is an increased demand on services and this can impact patient waiting times.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 July 2023
  2. News Article
    Adults across an integrated care system area are facing ‘unacceptable’ 10-year waits for an NHS assessment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the longest known wait for such services in England. Herefordshire and Worcestershire integrated care board has warned in board papers of “exceptionally high waiting times for ADHD assessment and treatment for Worcestershire patients (10 years+), with workforce challenges and service fragility compromising service delivery”. HSJ understands the long waits for ADHD diagnosis, which is a national problem, is predominately affecting adults with approximately 2,000 people on Herefordshire and Worcestershire’s ADHD list alone. Local provider Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care Trust also warned on its website that its paediatric services were also “experiencing unprecedented demand”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 19 July 2023
  3. News Article
    Campaigners are planning to launch legal action after NHS chiefs in North Yorkshire placed limits on which adults can get referrals for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessments. North Yorkshire and York Health and Care Partnerships introduced a pilot programme in March in which adults seeking an NHS assessment for autism or ADHD are triaged via an online screening tool. NHS chiefs say this screening process prioritises those with the most severe needs, rather than processing referrals in chronological order. These priority needs reportedly include the patient being at risk of immediate self-harm or harming others, at risk of being unable to have lifesaving hospital treatment or care placement, or an imminent risk of family court decisions being determined on diagnosis. Those who do not meet the criteria are given guidance and signposted to other support networks. But campaigners say that in practise that means that most people cannot get a referral for an assessment – GPs can no longer make referrals themselves. Read full story Source: The Big Issue, 19 July 2023 Related reading on the hub: Long waits for ADHD diagnosis and treatment are a patient safety issue
  4. News Article
    Children in some areas of England are waiting up to 18 months on average for dental general-anaesthetic treatment and teeth extractions, an investigation reveals. Some have been left with prolonged dental pain, according to information shared with BBC News. The parents of one girl who has waited three years for extractions say the pain keeps her up at night. At the start of this year, more than 12,000 under-18s were on waiting lists for assessment or treatment at community dental service (CDS) providers, data obtained by the Liberal Democrats from the NHS Business Services Authority and shared with BBC News earlier this year reveals. Children are referred to a CDS provider when they have tooth decay too severe to be treated in general practice. They also treat those with physical or learning disabilities when general practice is not a practical option. The longest average wait faced by children for general-anaesthetic treatment at a CDS provider is 80 weeks, at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust. Read full story Source: BBC News, 19 July 2023
  5. News Article
    A14-year-old girl could lose the ability to walk after her brain surgery was cancelled three times as NHS children’s services are stretched to breaking point. Piper Miller, who has severe autism, needs urgent surgery to remove fluid on her brain that if unaddressed could also leave her unable to control her bladder. But her operation has been pushed back three times in the past month due to emergency operations taking priority and severe short staffing made worse by junior doctors’ strikes. Her mum, Toni Milner said the delays had had a “heartbreaking and gut-wrenching” effect on her daughter whose anxiety is “sent through the roof” each time she is told she is not having her surgery. Piper’s story comes as NHS data uncovered by The Independent reveals at least 340 life-saving children’s operations, such as transplant and lung surgery, were shelved from April to December 2022, while 763 emergency operations were refused due to a lack of intensive care beds. Read full story Source: The Independent, 16 July 2023
  6. News Article
    Children with suspected ADHD and autism are waiting as long as seven years for treatment on the NHS, as the health service struggles to manage a surge in demand during a crisis in child mental health. Experts said “inhumane” waits are putting a generation of neurodiverse children at risk of mental illness as they are “pushed to the back of a very long queue” for children and adolescent mental health services (Camhs). UK children with suspected neurodevelopmental conditions faced an average waiting time of one year and four months for an initial screening in 2022, more than three times longer than the average wait for all Camhs services, according to research carried out by the House magazine and shared with the Guardian. Half of all trusts responding to a freedom of information request had an average wait of at least a year, and at one-sixth of trusts it was more than two years. The NICE guidance for autism and mental health services stipulates that no one should wait longer than 13 weeks between being referred and first being seen. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 July 2023 Related reading on the hub: Long waits for ADHD diagnosis and treatment are a patient safety issue
  7. News Article
    NHS waiting lists in England have climbed to a record level, according to new figures that show 7.47 million patients were waiting to start routine hospital treatment at the end of May, up from 7.42 million at the end of April. The growing list includes 416,000 children waiting to start treatment – up 9.7% in just one month, and including 21,282 who have been waiting more than a year. Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health president Camilla Kingdon said it is “unacceptable” and “unfathomable” to have so many children waiting so long. However, hospital leaders warned on Thursday they are not confident they will hit key NHS targets to reduce the waiting list in 2024 and 2025. The figures come during a five-day junior doctors’ strike during which tens of thousands of operations and appointments are expected to be cancelled and ahead of NHS consultants’ strikes where the major of planned care is expected to be paused. Read full story Source: The Independent, 13 July 2023
  8. News Article
    NHS England has reduced its elective activity target for the service because of the impact of junior doctors’ strike, and acknowledged the service may not hit the prime minister’s pledge to reduce waiting lists before the next general election if the industrial action continues. NHSE has agreed a deal with ministers which will see the “value based” elective activity target set for the service reduced for 2023-24 from 107 per cent of pre-pandemic levels to 105 per cent (See explainer box on value-based targets below). Trust finance bosses were briefed by NHSE chief finance officer Julian Kelly this morning (Wednesday 12 July) on the eve of junior doctors’ longest strike action to date. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 July 2023
  9. News Article
    Cheshire and Merseyside won Gold in the ‘Supporting Elective Recovery Through Digital’ category, at the HSJ Digital Awards, alongside technology partner C2-Ai, after transforming how waiting lists are managed with the help of an AI-backed waiting list model. The tool helps surgical teams identify previously hidden high-risk patients, and to make informed decisions on how, when and where to treat patients to achieve the best outcomes. NHS England, who commissioned the project, reported that within six weeks patient waiting lists dropped by nearly 30%, as well as a 66% decrease in intensive care needs for high-risk patients, saved about 2,500 hospital bed-days across 20,000 patients, and cut emergency admissions to the waiting list by 8%. Read full story Source: NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, 3 July 2023
  10. News Article
    The quality of care that the NHS provides has got worse in many key areas and patients’ long waits to access treatment could become even more common, research has found. The coalition government’s austerity programme in the early 2010s led to the heath service no longer being able to meet key waiting time targets, the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation said. Austerity ushered in “really concerning deterioration across the board” in the overall quality of NHS care, as judged by patients’ experience and prevention of ill-health, not just speed of access. Analysis by the two thinktanks’ joint Quality Watch programme, which monitors more than 150 indicators of care quality over time, found that in England: Fewer people with long-term heath conditions such as cancer, diabetes and depression, are getting enough help to manage their condition. Breast cancer screening rates for women aged 53-74 have fallen. It has become harder for patients to see a named GP. Only 6% of midwives think their maternity unit has enough staff to do its job properly. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 5 July 2023
  11. News Article
    A Conservative minister has acknowledged the NHS waiting list, which stands at a record high with more than 7.4 million people waiting for treatment in England, will “probably go up” before it goes down. Speaking on the 75th anniversary of its creation, the health minister Maria Caulfield claimed the NHS would be “thriving” in 25 years’ time, saying a two-year waiting time had “virtually been eliminated”. But experts have called for more investment in the NHS, with Prof Philip Banfield, the British Medical Council’s chair of council, saying the health service is so fragile that it may not survive until its 80th anniversary. The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said the NHS would die without “the necessary investment and reform” to change and modernise. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 5 July 2023
  12. News Article
    A pensioner is furious with Northern Ireland politicians who, she said, left her with no option but to spend her savings on knee surgery in Poland. Christine Wallace was told the wait for her knee replacement surgery could be five years - although the health department says most waits are shorter. She spent £8,500 on her hospital stay. While Ms Wallace said the relief of her new knee was fantastic, she felt she had no alternative but to pay as she could no longer live with the pain. The latest available health department figures, from 31 March, showed 25,075 patients were waiting for inpatient or day case admission under the trauma and orthopaedic surgery specialty. The department said its median waiting time for such operations was 74 weeks, with only 1 in 20 patients waiting more than five years. "Our preferred measure of average is the median... because waiting times tend to be skewed by longer waits and therefore more patients are waiting for less time than the mean," said a department statement. Read full story Source: BBC News, 28 June 2023
  13. News Article
    Millions of patients are being forced to pay for private healthcare amid record NHS waiting lists and are having to cut spending, raid savings or get into debt to fund it, new research reveals. One in 10 (10%) adults in the UK have turned to the private sector or independent healthcare in just the last 12 months, according to a survey commissioned by charity Engage Britain. Of those, almost two-thirds (63%) did so because they faced long delays or could not access treatment on the NHS. The latest NHS England figures show the number of people in England waiting for routine hospital treatments has jumped to a record 6.8 million. Of those who have gone private, almost half (46%) were forced to reduce their spending in other areas, plunder savings they had been keeping for another purpose, or get into financial debt to pay for it. Miriam Levin, health and care programme director at Engage Britain, said: “While the NHS still unites many of us with a feeling of pride, it’s clear more and more people feel forced to turn to private treatment. “As people suffer through months of pain and discomfort after postponed appointments, or waste time and energy chasing up referrals, millions are feeling desperate enough to use savings or get into debt to help us get well again.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 11 September 2022
  14. News Article
    Dee Dickens, 52, from Pontypridd, made the difficult choice to seek private healthcare even though she is ideologically opposed to it. After discovering a lump in her breast she was referred for a scan on the NHS’s two-week rule for suspected cancer. But after waiting six weeks, and being continually being told the waiting time was going up, eventually to a three-month wait, she was forced to pay for her own scan and appointment privately. “In February last year, I found a lump in my breast, and went to the doctor that day. The doctor examined me and said, ‘I don’t like that.’ She said the lump was the size of the top of her index finger and she would rush me through for an urgent screening that would take no longer than two weeks. “Two weeks later, I’d heard nothing so I gave them a call. They said that because of Covid, things had slowed down and it might take four weeks. “A week later, one of my breasts had swelled up. It was itching and hot and it felt like it was infected. I felt unwell, too. But I was stressed to the gills. Every day, I was worried I was going to die. We know that we’re against the clock when it’s cancer. “I went straight back to the doctor and she rang the hospital. They said, ‘We will put your patient right at the top of the waiting list, but it will now be six weeks.’ “At six weeks, I still hadn’t heard anything, so I called the hospital. They said that I was at the top of the list still, but it would now be 10 weeks. The wait was going up because, during the worst of Covid, they hadn’t seen anyone so they were now on catchup." “I’d had enough. Every single day I was more and more worried and my mental health was worse and worse, and my family was having to deal with me crying over stupid things. been talking about going private. But I’d been resistant – we’re both very leftwing and believe passionately in the NHS. However, in the Dee made an appointment with a private clinic. She was seen immediately. “After the scan, the doctor told me that the lumps were glandular tissue. The swelling, the pain and itching – were all stress related. As soon as he said, ‘You’re not going to die,’ they stopped. “The NHS is the only thing I’m truly proud of in the UK. What worries me is I can see it disappearing, if not in my lifetime then in my children’s lifetime. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to go private. It felt absolutely awful to have to make the choice I did. “On the one hand, I knew I would have an answer. But on the other, I knew there were so many women who wouldn’t be able to do what I was doing. I felt guilty, I felt I’d put my own life above my principles." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 11 September 2022
  15. News Article
    Liz Truss has been warned against “fantasy predictions” that the NHS can return to normal without radical change and was told that “unacceptable standards” are being normalised. In a rare political intervention, the professional standards body for the UK’s 220,000 doctors agreed that the NHS was routinely letting down patients. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said politicians must be prepared for radical changes to save the health service. Closing smaller hospitals, accepting that routine dentistry cannot be free for everyone and a return of Covid volunteers to allow doctors to treat more patients were all suggested by the head of the academy. The academy released a report that declared the NHS was in crisis, writing: “The system is providing increasing proportions of care or services which are sub-standard, threaten patient safety, and should not be acceptable in a country with the resources that we have in the United Kingdom. If we do not act with urgency, we risk permanently normalising the unacceptable standards we now witness daily.” The report sets out a series of recommendations for reform, including boosting staff numbers, reforming social care and spending more on technology. Helen Stokes-Lampard, the academy’s chairwoman, said patients were facing a “dismal winter” and that politicians must take difficult decisions. “If we don’t make changes it will inevitably deteriorate further,” she said. “The demand isn’t going away, the pressure isn’t going away, which is why the challenge for our government and for our whole society is to confront these issues and have a difficult conversation.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 9 September 2022
  16. News Article
    NHS trusts again recorded a month-on-month reduction in the number of patients waiting over 78 weeks for treatment, although the flagship target to eliminate this cohort by March remains a tall order, with winter pressures set to crank up. The overall waiting list rose from 6.7 to 6.8 million between June and July, a record high, with the number of those who have waited over a year rising from around 356,000 to around 378,000. However, the 78-week breach figure fell from 53,911 in July from 51,838 in June. It had stood at nearly 60,000 in May. This represents a significant achievement given the unprecedented pressures currently on the system. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 September 2022
  17. News Article
    Liz Truss has received a stark insight into the dire state of the NHS after new figures showed millions of people in England were facing often record delays to access vital healthcare. One leading NHS expert said the long waits for care, diagnostic tests and hospital beds showed that Britain’s new prime minister “inherits an NHS in critical condition”. The total number of people in England waiting for hospital treatment rose again to a record high of 6.8 million at the end of July – almost one in eight of the population. Patients are also facing long waits for accident and emergency care, cancer treatment, such as surgery or chemotherapy, and for an ambulance to arrive after a 999 call. Of the 6.8 million people on NHS England’s “referral to treatment” waiting list, 2,665,004 had been waiting for more than 18 weeks, which is the supposed maximum waiting time for procedures such as a joint replacement, hernia repair or cataract removal. In addition, 377,689 had been waiting more than a year to start their treatment, almost 22,000 more than a month before, according to the latest monthly performance data published by NHS England. The data showed that ministers and NHS bosses had failed to fulfil their pledge to eradicate two-year waits by the end of July; 2,885 such cases had not been resolved by then, despite major efforts by hospitals to meet the target. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 September 2022
  18. News Article
    The backlog of urgent cancer referral patients who have waited 104 days or more for treatment has increased month-on-month again, internal NHS data reveals. Data obtained by HSJ shows the total backlog of NHS patients waiting over three months for their first treatment since referral grew by 10% month-on-month, from 10,361 as of 26 June, to 11,212 by 28 August. There are now nearly 341,000 patients are waiting to start their cancer treatment after being referred, the internal data also reveals. Under current NHS rules, the 104-day point marks a “backstop” – beyond which any patient waiting longer than this for treatment should be reviewed for potential harm. The NHS has not achieved this target since 2014. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 7 September 2022
  19. News Article
    Over 50 new surgical hubs will open across the country to help bust the Covid-19 backlogs and offer hundreds of thousands more patients quicker access to vital procedures, Steve Barclay, has announced. These hubs will provide at least 100 more operating theatres and over 1,000 beds so people get the surgery they need. And they will deliver almost two million extra routine operations to reduce waiting lists over the next three years, backed by £1.5billion in government funding. They will focus mainly on providing high-volume, low-complexity surgery, as previously recommended by the Royal College of Surgeons of England, with particular emphasis on ophthalmology, general surgery, trauma and orthopaedics, gynaecology, ear nose and throat, and urology. Located on existing hospital sites, the surgical hubs will bring together skills and expertise of staff under one roof – reducing waiting times for some of the most-common procedures such as cataract surgeries and hip replacements. Improving quality and efficiency will mean patients have shorter waits for surgery, will be more likely to go home on the same day, and will be less likely to need additional treatment. And, as the hubs are separated from emergency services, surgical beds are kept free for patients waiting for planned operations, reducing the risk of short-notice cancellations and improving infection control. Read full story Source: Building Better Healthcare, 5 September 2022
  20. News Article
    Record NHS waiting lists cannot be attributed to the pandemic as the health service has been “steadily declining” for a decade, a report says. The number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has almost tripled from 2.5 million in April 2012 to 6.78 million, after reaching 4.6 million in February 2020. While Covid accelerated this trend, analysis suggests that even without the pandemic waiting lists for elective care would stand at 5.3 million. The Quality Watch report, by the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation think tanks, says the NHS was “already stretched beyond its limits” before Covid struck. Analysis of performance figures show waiting times for scans, A&E and cancer care have been increasing for many years amid chronic staff shortages. This deterioration means thousands of cancer patients each month face unacceptably long waits for treatment — damaging their survival chances. The report found waiting times for 15 key diagnostic tests, such as MRI or CT scans, had also rocketed. In April 2012 632,236 patients were on waiting lists for these tests. This backlog increased to one million by February 2020 before hitting 1.6 million this year. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 5 September 2022
  21. News Article
    Health secretary Steve Barclay says trust chief executives should be held accountable for ambulance handover delays in a ‘fair’ way that recognises factors outside their control. Mr Barclay made a wide ranging speech at a Policy Exchange event on Thursday. However, the content of the speech was much less radical than earlier press reports in which it was suggested he would tell the NHS to “scrap targets”, “declare war on pointless pen-pushers”, and deprioritise “cancer, maternity and mental health”. Last month, the health secretary summoned the chief executives of six of the NHS trusts which are recording the longest waits for ambulance handovers at their emergency departments. Mr Barclay was asked by HSJ what the consequences would be for leaders who failed to improve the situation. He said: “It’s not about blaming the chief executives, it’s about understanding what are their challenges and how do we then get clarity on that. “Once we’ve agreed on that, then you can have performance management to hold individual chiefs to [account on] the bits that are within their control, distinct from bits that may be the ambulance trust’s or others in the system.” He said the government and NHS England would ask what was “within the chief exec’s control” and how a trust’s performance compared to that of its peers? Trusts would be asked to “comply” with best practice or explain why they were not. The Department of Health and Social Care and NHSE would then be able to decide “what are the things where it [the trust] needs wider support?” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 2 September 2022
  22. News Article
    Patients waiting for surgery are turning up at A&E because they “can't cope”, the head of the NHS Confederation has warned. Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the body which represents all areas of the health service, said the NHS was in a "terrible situation" where it was facing "more demand than we can deal with". Some 6.7 million people are waiting to start hospital treatment after being referred by their GP, latest official data show. Urgent and emergency care is also under significant pressure, with 12-hour A&E waits increasing by a third in July to reach 29,317 - the worst on record. "We also know that people, many people, who are sick in the community waiting for operations, for example, and that's one of the reasons people end up in the emergency department because they get to the stage where they can't cope,” Mr Taylor said. "So the problem is that pressures in one part of the system drive pressure in others.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph (30 August 2022)
  23. News Article
    More than ten million patients are on “hidden” waiting lists for NHS care. There are 6.7 million patients on the official NHS waiting list, which includes people who have been referred by GPs for hospital treatment such as cataract or hip and knee surgery. However, data released by health service trusts under freedom of information laws suggests there are 10.3 million further patients who need follow-up care, illustrating the scale of the task facing the NHS. Louise Ansari, national director at the patient group Healthwatch England, said: “Waiting a long time for treatment can put a huge strain on patients and their loved ones. But this can be so much worse when there is ‘radio silence’ from the NHS, leaving people uncertain if their referral has been accepted, unclear about how long they may have to wait and often feeling forgotten.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times (30 August 2022)
  24. News Article
    People no longer believe the NHS will treat them quickly if they fall ill, according to new polling showing wide dissatisfaction about the state of the health service. With hundreds of ambulances stacked outside overstretched A&E departments and patients languishing on record waiting lists, voters are far more likely to say the service has worsened than improved in the last year. Fifty-eight per cent are not confident they would receive timely treatment from the NHS if they fell ill tomorrow, with 36 per cent not confident at all and 22 per cent just not confident. Meanwhile, 45 per cent believe the service they receive has worsened in the past 12 months. Just over half think it has become harder to get an appointment with their local doctor while 41 per cent think their local GP service has worsened. Robert Ede, head of health and social care at the Policy Exchange think tank, said: “It is concerning to see that a majority of the public don’t believe they would receive timely treatment from the NHS if they became ill tomorrow. There is a risk that the perception of a service in crisis beds in and actually leads to a complete erosion in public confidence." Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times (27 August 2022)
  25. News Article
    Dental patients are still suffering from the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, as parts of England are left with only one NHS dentist for thousands of people. In North Lincolnshire, there were just 54 NHS dentists – equivalent to one for every 3,199 people – at the end of March, NHS Digital figures show. This means every NHS dentist in the area would have to work nine-hour days every working day of the year without holidays for each resident to receive one annual checkup on the NHS. Across England, 24,272 dentists treated some NHS patients in the year to 31 March – up 2.3% from the previous year, broadly in keeping with the general population increase in the same period, but lower than pre-pandemic figures for the three previous years. The chair of the British Dental Association, Eddie Crouch, said the service was “on its last legs” and the figures underlined the need for radical and urgent change. “The government will be fooling itself and millions of patients if it attempts to put a gloss on these figures,” said Crouch. “NHS dentistry is light years away from where it needs to be. Unless ministers step up and deliver much-needed reform and decent funding, this will remain the new normal.” Read full story Source: The Guardian (25 August 2022)
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