Jump to content

Search the hub

Showing results for tags 'Long waiting list'.


More search options

  • Search By Tags

    Start to type the tag you want to use, then select from the list.

  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • All
    • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Culture
    • Improving patient safety
    • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Leadership for patient safety
    • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Patient engagement
    • Patient safety in health and care
    • Patient Safety Learning
    • Professionalising patient safety
    • Research, data and insight
    • Miscellaneous

Categories

  • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Commissioning and funding patient safety
    • Digital health and care service provision
    • Health records and plans
    • Innovation programmes in health and care
    • Climate change/sustainability
  • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Blogs
    • Data, research and statistics
    • Frontline insights during the pandemic
    • Good practice and useful resources
    • Guidance
    • Mental health
    • Exit strategies
    • Patient recovery
    • Questions around Government governance
  • Culture
    • Bullying and fear
    • Good practice
    • Occupational health and safety
    • Safety culture programmes
    • Second victim
    • Speak Up Guardians
    • Staff safety
    • Whistle blowing
  • Improving patient safety
    • Clinical governance and audits
    • Design for safety
    • Disasters averted/near misses
    • Equipment and facilities
    • Error traps
    • Health inequalities
    • Human factors (improving human performance in care delivery)
    • Improving systems of care
    • Implementation of improvements
    • International development and humanitarian
    • Safety stories
    • Stories from the front line
    • Workforce and resources
  • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Investigations and complaints
    • Risk management and legal issues
  • Leadership for patient safety
    • Business case for patient safety
    • Boards
    • Clinical leadership
    • Exec teams
    • Inquiries
    • International reports
    • National/Governmental
    • Patient Safety Commissioner
    • Quality and safety reports
    • Techniques
    • Other
  • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Government and ALB direction and guidance
    • International patient safety
    • Regulators and their regulations
  • Patient engagement
    • Consent and privacy
    • Harmed care patient pathways/post-incident pathways
    • How to engage for patient safety
    • Keeping patients safe
    • Patient-centred care
    • Patient Safety Partners
    • Patient stories
  • Patient safety in health and care
    • Care settings
    • Conditions
    • Diagnosis
    • High risk areas
    • Learning disabilities
    • Medication
    • Mental health
    • Men's health
    • Patient management
    • Social care
    • Transitions of care
    • Women's health
  • Patient Safety Learning
    • Patient Safety Learning campaigns
    • Patient Safety Learning documents
    • 2-minute Tuesdays
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2018
    • Patient Safety Learning Awards 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Interviews
    • Patient Safety Learning webinars
  • Professionalising patient safety
    • Accreditation for patient safety
    • Competency framework
    • Medical students
    • Patient safety standards
    • Training & education
  • Research, data and insight
    • Data and insight
    • Research
  • Miscellaneous

News

  • News

Categories

  • Files

Calendars

  • Community Calendar

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start
    End

Last updated

  • Start
    End

Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End


Group


First name


Last name


Country


Join a private group (if appropriate)


About me


Organisation


Role

Found 778 results
  1. Content Article
    In this episode of the King's Fund podcast, Ruth Robertson explores how the NHS elective care waiting list can be managed in a way that improves health equity with Dr Mark Ratnarajah, UK Managing Director at C2-Ai, Sharon Brennan, Director of Policy and External Affairs at National Voices and Dr Polly Mitchell, Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Bioethics and Public Policy at King’s College London.
  2. News Article
    Moving less complex procedures out of operating theatres and into other care settings to free up capacity to support elective recovery has ‘inadvertently’ increased the risk of ‘never events’ at an acute trust, a report has warned. The warning was made in a report into four never events at North Bristol Trust’s Southmead Hospital between November 2022 and January 2023 – two of which involved the same patient. The review was commissioned by Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire integrated care board to examine common issues in never events involving invasive procedures. It found an increase in never events when procedures were moved away from operating theatres to other care settings. The review found moving procedures from theatres to outpatient or day case facilities to “support the reduction in the [elective] backlog and improve the waiting times for patients… may also inadvertently increase the risk of never events”. It added: “It is likely that a theatre environment has more established and embedded safety control mechanisms. Governance processes in moving such procedures should consider the impact on quality, for example, the gaps between safety processes and consideration of the minimum requirements for the new procedure location.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 29 November 2023
  3. News Article
    Almost 8,000 people were harmed and 112 died last year as a direct result of enduring long waits for an ambulance or surgery, prompting warnings that NHS care delays are “a disaster”. The fatalities included a man who died of a cardiac arrest after waiting 18 minutes for his 999 call to be answered by the ambulance service and was dead by the time the crew arrived. The figures are the first time NHS England has disclosed how often doctors and nurses file a patient safety report after someone suffers harm while waiting for help. They show that patient deaths arising directly from care delays have risen more than fivefold over the last three years, from 21 in 2019 to 112 last year, as the NHS has come under huge strain. The number of people who came to “severe harm” has also jumped from 96 to 152 during that period. “These data are alarming and show quite clearly the human impact the crisis in the NHS is having on individual patients,” said Rachel Power, the chief executive of the Patients Association. “We have been watching a disaster unfolding across the NHS and have repeatedly warned about the threat to patient safety because of it.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2023
  4. News Article
    Chaotic communication by the NHS in England is causing harmful delays to treatment and endangering patient health, according to research. Widespread communication problems that leave patients and staff scrambling to find their referrals, missing appointments, or receiving late diagnoses have been uncovered in a study by the Demos thinktank, the Patients Association, and the PMA, a professional membership body for healthcare workers. In a poll of 2,000 members of the public and NHS staff across England in October, more than half said they had experienced poor communication from the health service in the past five years, with one in 10 saying their care had been affected as a result. The research also found that over the last year, 18% had their care, or the care of an immediate family member, delayed or affected because they were referred to the wrong service, while 26% said they or a close family member had been inconvenienced because they were given the date and time of an appointment without enough notice. Miriam Levin, the director of participatory programmes at Demos, said that despite the great esteem and pride in the NHS, patients found navigating the system frustrating and stressful. “We heard countless stories of critical appointments missed, diagnoses not shared or shared too late, and referrals for treatment that went missing. This leads to real harm,” she said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2023
  5. News Article
    Several trusts are failing to admit their sickest emergency patients in a timely fashion, despite performing well in official waiting time statistics, HSJ can reveal. The internal NHS England data, obtained via a Freedom of Information request, reveals 12 trusts which have performed above the average against the four-hour accident and emergency target are delivering relatively poor waiting times for patients who require admission, as opposed to those who, for example, can be discharged after being seen. The unpublished provisional data shows an average of just 30% of admitted patients in England spend four hours or less in A&E against the 95% target. But many trusts are falling significantly below this – including those trusts at or around NHSE’s interim target of 76% for four hours performance for all patients by March 2024. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 24 November 2023
  6. News Article
    Patients are being forced to pay for urgent eye care or risk going blind because of long NHS waits. MPs will today hear the scale of the “emergency” with four in five high street optometrists revealing their patients have paid for private procedures in the past six months. Dame Andrea Leadsom, the former House of Commons leader, business secretary and environment secretary, is being called on to commit to improving NHS eye care in her new role as public health minister. Four in five optometrists say they have patients waiting more than a year to be referred for an NHS appointment or treatment, according to analysis by the Association of Optometrists (AOP), leaving them at risk of going blind. About 640,000 people are waiting for an NHS ophthalmology appointment, more than any other speciality – accounting for about one in 11 people on the 7.8 million waiting list. About half of these people say their sight is deteriorating while they wait to be seen. Tens of thousands have been waiting more than a year, the AOP said. In a letter to Dame Leadsom, Adam Sampson, the chief executive of the AOP, said that high street optometrists should be used more widely across the NHS for “cataract surgery, help for glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration”. Mr Sampson said: “With the expansion of primary eye care services, more patients will have a better chance of receiving improved treatment, faster and locally, which could prevent avoidable irreversible sight loss.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 23 November 2023
  7. News Article
    HSJ analysis of the NHS England data also found that 19,000 adults with a serious mental illness are waiting for longer than 18 months for a second contact with community mental health services. This is seen as a more meaningful metric for adults than the first contact. In total, almost 240,000 children and young people were waiting for treatment from community mental health services in August 2023, as well as more than 192,000 adults. The data revealed the median, or typical, waiting time for children and young people from referral to first contact was 178 days. The median wait time for adults from referral to “second contact” was 120 days. The NHS long-term plan set out proposals for a four-week waiting time standard for children and adults to access community mental health services. This approach was piloted and a consultation published, but the new standards are yet to be implemented. Sean Duggan, chief executive of the mental health network at the NHS Confederation, said leaders would be concerned – although “not surprised” – that patients were waiting so long for community services. He added: “We need access and waiting times standards for all mental health services, to help us improve national data and to direct and allocate resources effectively.”
  8. News Article
    The NHS should better track patients with the greatest clinical need so they can move to the front of the queue for treatment, a former government waiting list tsar has said. Anthony “Mac” McKeever told HSJ the health service could improve how it works through its elective backlog by using a system introduced during the covid pandemic to prioritise the most pressing cases. He said a “large chunk” of cases were still not given a code to say how long they are considered to be able to wait for surgery, which is at the heart of this process. Mr McKeever retired as Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board chief executive this month following nearly five decades in the health service, including as a trust leader. Although Mr McKeever said he only knew the regional situation for the East of England, he would be “very surprised” if the national picture was any different. Waiting list expert Rob Findlay agreed this was a reasonable assumption. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 November 2023
  9. Content Article
    “Crisis,” “collapse,” “catastrophe” — these are common descriptors from recent headlines about the NHS in the UK. In 2022, the NHS was supposed to begin its recovery from being perceived as a Covid-and-emergencies-only service during parts of 2020 and 2021. Throughout the year, however, doctors warned of a coming crisis in the winter of 2022 to 2023. The crisis duly arrived. In this New England Journal of Medicine article, David Hunter gives his perspective on the current state of the NHS.
  10. News Article
    New data suggests around 700,000 cases on the elective waiting list relate to patients who are on at least four different pathways, and NHS England says personalised care plans must be developed to treat them more efficiently. NHSE has published new data that reveals the overall referral to treatment waiting list, of 7.8 million cases, is made up of 6.5 million individual patients. The difference is due to some patients waiting for more than one treatment. Stella Vig, NHSE’s clinical director for secondary care, told HSJ around 2-3% of the individual patients on the waiting list are on four to five pathways or more. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 9 November 2023
  11. News Article
    NHS England ‘lacks a clear vision’ on a key part of its health inequalities agenda and is not holding trusts to account for delivering an ‘inclusive recovery’, a study by the King’s Fund has concluded. The think-tank’s report, which represents one of the most comprehensive analyses on the subject to date, said system leaders had not made the case for change “strongly or clearly enough to convince clinicians and other staff to consider inequalities” when tackling elective backlogs. The think-tank said it had undertaken the research to investigate to what extent local NHS organisations had taken an “inclusive approach” to managing waiting lists, as NHS England had ordered them to do in August 2020. The research team said in a statement alongside the report: “There has been a lack of a clear vision from national leaders on why inclusive recovery is important for delivering better and fairer services for patients and the public. “The report calls on the government to pay greater attention to inclusive recovery to ensure progress is made so that patients can be treated fairly, no matter their background.” Read full story Source: HSJ, 8 November 2023
  12. News Article
    Long waits in A&E departments may have caused around 30,000 ‘excess deaths’ last year, according to new estimates. Using a methodology backed by experts, HSJ analysis of official data has produced an estimate of 29,145 ‘excess deaths’ related to long accident and emergency delays in 2022-23, up from 22,175 in 2021-22, and 9,783 related deaths in 2020-21. For the first time, the analysis has also produced estimates of excess mortality related to long A&E delays for every acute trust. The data suggests the rate of excess deaths from 2022-23 has so far continued into 2023-24. The analysis followed a methodology used in a peer-reviewed study published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, which found delays to hospital admission for patients of more than five hours from time of arrival at A&E were associated with an increase in all-cause mortality within 30 days. Data scientist Steve Black, one of the authors of the EMJ study, said: “Long waits in A&E should never happen and 12-hour waits should be something like a never event. They should be intolerable anywhere. If we want to fix them it’s helpful to know which trusts have the worst problems with long waits.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 7 November 2023
  13. Content Article
    Structural, economic and social factors can lead to inequalities in the length of time people wait for NHS planned hospital care – such as hip or knee operations – and their experience while they wait. In 2020, after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, NHS England asked NHS trusts and systems to take an inclusive approach to tackling waiting lists by disaggregating waiting times by ethnicity and deprivation to identify inequalities and to take action in response. This was an important change to how NHS organisations were asked to manage waiting lists – embedding work to tackle health inequalities into the process. Between December 2022 and June 2023, the King’s Fund undertook qualitative case studies about the implementation of this policy in three NHS trusts and their main integrated care boards (ICBs), and interviewed a range of other people about using artificial intelligence (AI) to help prioritise care. It also reviewed literature, NHS board papers and national waiting times data. The aim was to understand how the policy was being interpreted and implemented locally, and to extract learning from this. It found work was at an early stage, although there were examples of effective interventions that made appointments easier to attend, and prioritised treatment and support while waiting. Reasons for the lack of progress included a lack of clarity about the case for change, operational challenges such as poor data, cultural issues including different views about a fair approach, and a lack of accountability for the inclusive part of elective recovery. Taking an inclusive approach to tackling waiting lists should be a core part of effective waiting list management and can contribute to a more equitable health system and healthier communities. Tackling inequalities on waiting lists is also an important part of the NHS’s wider ambitions to address persistent health inequalities. But to improve the slow progress to date, NHS England, ICBs and trusts need to work with partners to make the case for change, take action and hold each other to account.
  14. Content Article
    Good patient communication is key, particularly when a patient is waiting for planned care or treatment. From referral by a primary care clinician through to discharge from secondary care, clear, accessible communication is vital throughout. This guide from NHS England sets out key communication principles to help providers deliver personalised, patient-centred communications. It includes considerations for communicating to patients about new models of care as well as helpful information and resources. It covers key aspects of patient communication while waiting for care including personalisation, using clear language, shared decision making, managing delays and cancellations and offering interim health information.
  15. News Article
    NHS England boss Amanda Pritchard has warned that meeting key elective recovery targets to eliminate 65-week waiters by March and ensure the waiting list is falling by next year is becoming “increasingly challenging”. Ms Pritchard also re-emphasised concerns already expressed by NHS England that “if strikes continue into winter, it will be extremely difficult for us to provide safe care to our patients, particularly with a twindemic of covid and flu”. The NHSE boss was asked by HSJ at the King’s Fund’s annual conference on Thursday how confident she was about the NHS achieving its next elective recovery target on 65-week waiters and the prime minister’s pledge in January to reduce overall waiting lists. Ms Pritchard said: “We are really encouraged that there are talks under way between the government and the British Medical Association but clearly having had the level of disruption over the last 10 months of industrial action, we have seen really significant challenge on maintaining focus on reducing both long waits and on tackling overall waiting list size.” She said that on weeks when there were no strikes, waiting lists reduced, and there had been sustained progress on cutting long waiters “despite the pressures of industrial action”. She praised the “extraordinary amount of focus and creativity from NHS staff” to achieve this. But she added: “[There has to be] a real recognition that with ongoing industrial action [reducing long waiters and the overall list] is going to be an increasingly challenging target.” Read full story Source: HSJ, 3 November 2023
  16. News Article
    Patients who have been waiting more than 40 weeks for treatment in England will be offered the option of getting seen in another part of the country. About 400,000 will be contacted in the coming weeks and asked whether they would be willing to travel and how far. Patients already have a right to ask for treatment elsewhere. But NHS England believes that by proactively contacting the longest waiters they will help unlock some of the worst bottlenecks in the system. Only those who do not have an appointment already scheduled within the next eight weeks will receive the offer via text, email or letter. The 400,000 figure represents about 5% of the total number waiting for treatment. If a patient is happy to travel, the treatment could either be in an NHS or private sector hospital. Those on low incomes will be entitled to some financial support to enable them to travel for treatment. Patients will retain their place on the waiting list at their local hospital while other options are explored. Read full story Source: BBC News, 31 October 2023
  17. News Article
    Former BBC Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, now a writer and podcaster, has Parkinson's disease. Two weeks ago, after fracturing his elbow in a nasty fall, he found out just how difficult it can be to get answers from the NHS. "Getting information about one's treatment seems like an obstacle race where the system is always one step ahead. But communication between medical staff within and between hospitals also appears hopelessly inadequate, with the gulf between doctors and nurses particularly acute. "I also sense that, in some cases, new computer systems are slowing not speeding information through the system. On Saturday morning, as we waited in the surgical assessment unit, four nurses gathered around a computer screen while a fifth explained to them all the steps needed to check-in a patient and get them into a bed. It took about 20 minutes and appeared to be akin to mastering some complex video game beset with bear traps." Rory's latest experience as a customer of the health service has left him convinced that more money and more staff won't solve its problems without some fundamental changes in the way it communicates. Read full story Source: BBC News, 29 October 2023
  18. News Article
    Rishi Sunak is “highly unlikely” to meet his promise to cut NHS waiting lists, health leaders have warned, as a “sobering” analysis suggests the backlog will rise to 8 million and won’t begin to fall until next summer. The prime minister vowed in January that “NHS waiting lists will fall” as he outlined five pledges upon which he staked his premiership. The backlog was 7.2 million at the time. It is now 7.75 million, the highest since records began in 2007. But a grim report published today by the Health Foundation, an independent thinktank, will pile further pressure on Sunak over the NHS. The 15-page analysis predicts that the waiting list for hospital treatment in England will continue to rise for at least 10 months and ultimately top 8 million, regardless of whether or not strikes continue. The thinktank modelled four different scenarios and concluded that, based on current trends, NHS waiting list figures could peak by August 2024 if there was no more strike action by healthcare workers, before starting to come down. If strikes were to continue, the list could increase a further 180,000, it said. Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “This analysis all but confirms that the prime minister’s pledge to reduce the size of the waiting list is increasingly unlikely to be met.” He added: “As the Health Foundation report rightly says, the root cause of the delays to treatment that patients are now experiencing is a decade of underinvestment in the NHS.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 October 2023
  19. Content Article
    New analysis by the Health Foundation shows that, if current trends continue, the waiting list for routine hospital treatment (‘elective care’) in England could rise to over 8 million by next summer, regardless of whether NHS industrial action continues.   The analysis models four different future scenarios to look at the prospects for reducing the waiting list by the end of 2024. It shows that, on current trends, the waiting list could peak at 8 million by August 2024 if there is no further strike action, before starting to fall. If strike action were to continue the waiting list could be 180,000 higher.   The analysis finds that industrial action by consultants and junior doctors has so far lengthened the waiting list by around 210,000, just 3% of the overall size of the list, which totalled 7.75 million at the end of August 2023. The analysis also points out that strikes are also likely to have indirect impacts, by squeezing NHS finances and diverting management attention away from productivity improvement.    The analysis, which features an interactive ‘waiting list calculator’, also includes illustrative better and worse case scenarios.
  20. News Article
    The community services waiting list has risen sharply to more than 1 million, with children suffering the longest waits, new data has revealed. NHS England figures published today show the adult community waiting list increased from 704,000 to 781,000 between October 2022 – the first published data available – and August. The children and young people’s list rose from 207,000 to 221,000. This means the overall community waiting list for England has exceeded 1 million for the first time since figures were first published in October last year. Waits for musculoskeletal services dropped to a low of 255,000 in January. But this progress has since reversed – and, in July, the number of people waiting for care climbed to a high point of 319,000. The waiting for podiatry and podiatric services, meanwhile, has climbed by 7% since October from 117,000 to 126,000, adding an extra 8,000 people to the waiting list. These services also account for 46 per cent – or 5,635 – of the waiting list over 52 weeks. Waiting lists for smaller adult specialties have also significantly worsened. For example, nursing and therapy support for long-term conditions saw large increases in three areas: continence and colostomy, rising by 16%; respiratory and COPD, rising by 27%; and diabetes, rising by 37%. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 October 2023
  21. News Article
    The NHS waiting list in England has hit a new record high, with almost 7.8 million people waiting for treatment, data shows. An estimated 7.75 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of August, up from 7.68 million in July. It is the highest number since records began in August 2007. The waiting list for treatment has been growing for much of the last decade, passing three million in 2014, four million in 2017, five million in 2021 and seven million in 2022. As the NHS waiting list grows A&E pressures are “ running red hot”, a major think tank has warned, with new figures showing 123,000 patients waited more than 12 hours in emergency departments last month. Some 8,998 people in England are estimated to have been waiting more than 18 months to start routine hospital treatment at the end of August, up from 7,289 at the end of July, according to data. A total of 396,643 people in England had been waiting more than 52 weeks to start routine hospital treatment at the end of August, up from 389,952 at the end of July. The Government and NHS England have set the ambition of eliminating all waits of more than a year by March 2025. Read full story Source: The Independent, 12 October 2023
  22. News Article
    NHS England plans to reduce follow-up appointments is leading to patient safety risks and causing waiting lists to grow, an acute trust has warned. The NHSE plans were set out in the 2023-24 planning guidance which says trusts must cut outpatient follow-ups by 25% against 2019-20 levels by March, to increase capacity for new patients. But North Cumbria Integrated Care Foundation Trust has raised concerns that adhering to the policy will “exacerbate” its follow-up backlogs, warning that the delays “potentially… pose a risk of harm to patients whose condition may deteriorate when follow-up is late”. NHS Confederation told HSJ it thought the policy “has risks” because it could mean that patients needing follow-ups will wait for longer, although the organisation also saw benefits. It said hospital leaders had “mixed feelings” about the policy. The Patients Association also raised concerns that cancelling follow-ups for some patients “will exacerbate health inequalities”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 October 2023
  23. News Article
    Mental healthcare in England has become “a national emergency”, with “overwhelmed” services unable to cope with a big post-Covid surge in people needing help, NHS bosses say. Care is so stretched that thousands of people undergoing a mental health crisis are having to be admitted every year to acute hospitals, even though they are not set up to deal with them. Hospital bosses claim mental health in England has been “forgotten” by ministers who are giving priority to tackling the record 7.7m-strong care backlog, access to GPs and ongoing NHS strikes. “Mental health has slipped down the government’s set of priorities and patients and services are being forgotten. This is a national emergency which is now having serious consequences across the board, not least for those patients in crisis,” said Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 October 2023
  24. News Article
    The drive to cut NHS waiting lists are becoming ‘disproportionately reliant’ on the private sector, experts have warned, as new data suggests rapid growth in the elective activity carried out by non-NHS providers. Internal figures for activity commissioned by integrated care boards and NHS England, seen by HSJ, suggests the value-weighted activity carried out by private providers has increased by around 30 per cent on pre-covid levels. The value-weighted elective activity carried out by NHS providers rose by just three per cent over the same three-month period, from April to June 2023. The figures relate to activity measured under the “elective recovery fund”, which accounts for the bulk of elective activity. NHSE said it was right to make use of “all available capacity” to treat long-waiters. However, experts said the NHS would struggle to bring down waiting lists without significantly increasing the amount of elective work it did. Waiting list analyst Rob Findlay said independent sector outsourcing was “not genuine backlog clearance, but a way of plugging some of the recurring shortfall in core NHS capacity.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 23 October 2023
  25. News Article
    Children are waiting years for autism and cerebral palsy treatments as NHS leaders accuse the government of ignoring warnings of a crisis in community care. The number of patients waiting for NHS community services hit more than one million in August and a new analysis has revealed one in five of those patients are children. The waits are so bad in some areas of England that a 12-year-old needing treatment might not get it until they are 16, the NHS Community Services Network warned. The analysis, by NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, also found 34,000 children have been waiting more than 18 weeks for diagnosis and care, which is the maximum time anyone should be waiting, with the backlogs growing quickly in spinal and eye care. Matthew Taylor, chief executive for NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals, community service providers and primary care, told The Independent that long waits can impact children more severely than adults because delays in treatment can have a knock-on effect on communication skills, social development and educational as well as mental wellbeing. “We have a real and growing problem with long waits in community services, but despite repeated warnings that neglect of these vital services is having a detrimental impact on patients, these warnings seem to be met with a shoulder shrug from the government. Leaders are working incredibly hard to deliver these important services for patients but are fighting a rising tide and need help,” he said. Read full story Source: The Independent, 20 October 2023
×
×
  • Create New...