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NHS Waiting Lists Growing

Nhs Waiting Lists

First Posted: 06/07/11 20:04 BST Updated: 05/09/11 11:12 BST

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Press Association -- There has been a jump in the number of patients waiting more than six weeks for key tests over the past year.

At the end of May, 15,900 people were waiting more than six weeks for one of 15 key tests, including MRI, CT and heart scans, ultrasound and colonoscopies.

This is an increase of 12,400 from May 2010 and a monthly jump of 1,800 on April's figures.

Of those waiting more than six weeks, 1,806 were waiting more than 13 weeks.

The South East Coast strategic health authority had the most people (4,240) waiting more than six weeks, about four times the number in some other regions. Of all the NHS patients waiting at the end of May 2011 (584,422), 97.3% had been waiting less than six weeks, compared to 99.3% in May 2010. The data relates to England.

Last month, figures showed the number of hospital trusts breaching a key waiting time limit has more than doubled in a year.

Data for April showed 51 trusts - around a third of the total - were not hitting the limit for treating patients within 18 weeks of referral by their GP. This compared with 25 trusts a year ago.

However, many hospitals are doing better than expected, meaning the NHS is still meeting its pledge of treating 90% of patients within 18 weeks.

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised not to lose control of waiting times after Health Secretary Andrew Lansley scrapped the 18 week target set by Labour.

Hospitals have been told they are still expected to see most patients within 18 weeks. The latest figures relate to tests rather than treatment.

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Press Association -- There has been a jump in the number of patients waiting more than six weeks for key tests over the past year. At the end of May, 15,900 people were waiting more than six weeks ...
Press Association -- There has been a jump in the number of patients waiting more than six weeks for key tests over the past year. At the end of May, 15,900 people were waiting more than six weeks ...
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mrdailydigger
109 Fans
 
01:42 AM on 07/08/2011
Labour may not have been perfect but their ideas regarding waiting times were a step in the right direction. The Tories and the lib dems should really re think this one. Its only by adding more scanners and screening rooms that you can decrease the size of these lists. Not by seeking savings through expesnive restructuring exercises. We pay less than the european average for healthcare as it is, why on earth we continue expect perfect healthcare on the cheap I will never know.
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Marty Jarvy
188 Fans
08:55 PM on 07/07/2011
Of course waiting times are going up. The NHS for many months now has been being completely restructured without any additional resources.

As a result, there's massive upheaval, and the money to pay for it has to come from the money which provided Elective surgery and procedures.
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ManishPatel
4 Fans
02:12 PM on 07/07/2011
Patients are dying on the NHS waiting lists while the Fat Cat (for the most part not medically qualified) bosses at the NHS keep being rewarded (for what?). Remember this list from the Telegraph May 2011:

THE HIGHEST NHS EARNERS

1. David Bennett £282,500
Iinterim chief executive of Monitor, regulator of NHS foundation trusts
2. Neil Lloyd £282,500
Chief executive, NHS Professionals
3. Ruth Carnall £277,500
Chief executive, London Strategic Health Authority
4. Sir Ron Kerr £274,500
Chief executive, Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust
5. Sir Robert Naylor £262,500
Chief executive, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
6. Peter Morris £262, 000
Chief executive, Barts and The London trust
7. Clare Chapman £252,500
Director general of workforce, Department of Health
8. Sir Andrew Cash £243,100
Chief executive, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust
9. Dr Mark Goldman £242, 500
Chief executive, Heart of England Foundation Trust until July 2010
10. David Dalton £232 600
Chief executive, Salford Royal NHS Foundation trust

These are the people that are fighting Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms...
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Marty Jarvy
188 Fans
08:54 PM on 07/07/2011
Well - yes...but then those people were in charge when there were LOWER waiting times. I think you've got things the wrong way around, as it's not that waiting times increased once those people had been employed.

Waiting times increased once the NHS was completely restructured with no additional funding.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
eva belle
Kolob a-calling
890 Fans
 
10:12 AM on 07/07/2011
Do you reckon we will move eventually to US style health care?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
deluk
disgusted.
691 Fans
10:15 AM on 07/07/2011
no.
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clearthinker2008
we need to respect each other
791 Fans
 
05:15 PM on 07/07/2011
You had better hope not.
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RS
I think, therefore, I don't listen to Limbaugh
767 Fans
05:40 PM on 07/07/2011
Because if you DO move to U.S. style health care, mark my words: YOUR WALLETS WILL GET CLEANED OUT ALMOST INSTANTLY by big insurance companies and/or big pharmaceutical companies if you get seriously ill -- I GUARANTEE IT!
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OdinBC
3 Fans
09:51 AM on 07/07/2011
This is absolutely fascinating, seeing that the issues confronting folks in the UK are pretty much identical to those confronting the rest of us in North America with the same mindsets in play.
As a Canadian Liberal progressive, I have yet to fully understand the conservative fuzzy logic.
Let's see, their solutions are for the poor to get a job or a better paying job at a time when their supporters in business are sitting on trillions of dollars, euros and pounds uninvested in their home economies instead of creating jobs and opportunities in those economies. Even though these investments in their home economies would improve the buying power of those economies thereby increasing their own profits and in turn both citizens and businesses would pay sufficient additional taxes(on profits, dividends and salaries) to meet the basic operations of those services which are a benefit not only to the individuals themselves but to businesses in having a healthy workforce. (sorry about the run-on sentences)
I am going to guess that your NHS has the same type of people running your system as we have in ours. Pretty much a bunch of triple digit earning executives (bureaucrats) writing up reports, not accomplishing much and not looking at the system from the patients' perspective or how to effectively streamline the system and make it more accessible and affordable.
Oh heck, why bother, the patient died.
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LeetaSee
4 Fans
 
09:27 AM on 07/07/2011
I'm sorry - only 97% of people see a doctor within a reasonable amount of time instead of 99%? I understand that this is a "slide downward" to the British folk, but I'm looking at this through American eyes and LAUGHING. Ask anyone in the US who has an HMO, is underinsured, or is NOT insured (which is tens of millions of people), and they'll jump at the chance to wait 6+ weeks to be able to see a doctor, and then possibly have life-saving surgery that costs them $0 after the insurance pays out.

It isn't "laziness" that keeps people from getting health insurance in America. This is a meaningless talking point. It's the for-profit system and the health-coverage-tied-to-your-employment system. As though my job status has something to do with whether or not I get cancer or break my leg.
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isaluna
No Good Deed Goes Un Punished
246 Fans
 
05:07 AM on 07/07/2011
Last I checked ---the UK is an Island. When you have masses immigrating to an Island, it will put a strain on social services. Same thing happened to California with the 12 million illegal immigrants - what little public healthcare we did have access to, is appallingly bad and the emergency rooms at hospitals are filled up with illegal immigrants, takes hours to see a doctor, in an emergency! Education went downhill to number 38 out of 50 States, and CA has a lot of very wealthy people, however, public education, paid for by taxing the homeowners,....is worse than Alabama! (which is a very poor state) I am not a racist, I am completely for social services, however, I do not understand, why do our Countries keep allowing our cities to be over run with immigrants to the point where we lose the quality of life that we worked hard so hard for? Is this all so that Corporations can get slave labor? The tax payers bear the brunt of the cost of social services without the benefits.
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LeetaSee
4 Fans
 
11:22 AM on 07/07/2011
Last time I checked, citizenship status has nothing to do with health status. Perhaps, instead of punishing the human beings, 100% of whom need medical care at some point regardless of the passport's country of issue, there's an expansion of medical services to meet demand? Even with 0 immigrants, populations grow. Next thing, we'll start blaming people for having "too many children" and our "medical system can't handle it".
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isaluna
No Good Deed Goes Un Punished
246 Fans
 
08:07 PM on 07/07/2011
Population has everything to do with adequate social services. How can we expect quality healthcare and education when 'the system' is over capacity. Something has to change, cutting back services is not the answer - that is in-humane - however, expecting the middleclass to bear the brunt of the Taxes is not fair, The Corporations and businesses that benefit from the cheap labor should be forced to Pony up. Every human should has access to good healthcare - including alternative health care, waiting endlessly to get treatment is not quality care. The elite rich (individual or corporate) need to step up and pay more into the social structure.
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Marty Jarvy
188 Fans
08:58 PM on 07/07/2011
Not sure that makes sense.

- Being an island is irrelevant. Additional demand would have an effect on ANY country

- The UK's demand through immigration isn't particularly higher than the burden on any comparable country

- The demand from non-immigrants increases by about 4% per year across the health economy, which completely swamps the very small impact of immigration

In other words, that's not particularly a factor.
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CitizenJon
4 Fans
02:01 AM on 07/07/2011
This doesn't surprise me with the Tories in charge. I don't see a move towards the US model as helping.

According to the Guardian the UK spends just $2,815 per capita on healthcare and the US $6,719. Yet the latter has fewer doctors per capita and far fewer nurses, midwives and hospital beds. Life expectancy at birth in the US (78) is two years less than in the UK (80). Mind you in Japan it’s 83.

So if the NHS is relatively cheap and we know it enjoys widespread support in the UK why change it? You’d think in hard times we couldn’t afford a more expensive system. Perhaps all that lobbying from private health insurance companies explains it.

Am I allowed web addresses for the source info.?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/mar/22/us-healthcare-bill-rest-of-world-obama
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politicorn
69 Fans
08:25 AM on 07/07/2011
I'm an American... I was born with a heart condition and I can only buy insurance through my employer, because I have a "pre-existing condition." While I think that competition can create more innovation and private doctors and private non-profit hospitals do a lot of good, the real problem in America is the privatized for-profit insurance industry. Not only is a lot of your money wasted on overhead, the incentive of the insurance companies is to not treat you.
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RoboRon
49 Fans
 
12:12 AM on 07/07/2011
As usual, as soon as the Tories get an inch of power they make cuts to the NHS with the intention of bringing it to it's knees.
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silverlake3
54 Fans
11:37 PM on 07/06/2011
Obviously this pure socialized free medical system does not work. Government run healthcare should be a cost sharing program. Make people pay something like 20 or 25 dollars for a doctor visit, $75 a day to stay in a hospital, $100 for an MRI, $30 for a chest Xray and so on. Free anything is a bad thing and causes problems like you see in Britain and Canada and their healthcare systems. Here in the United States we are not much better off because we are at the mercy of profit driven insurance companies who make money when they deny people expensive care and we have about 50 milliion people who have no insurance at all who go to hospital emergency rooms for basic care and drive up costs for all of us when they do not pay.
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Just a passerby
954 Fans
12:22 AM on 07/07/2011
I'm not the sure the problem is caused by over-use, which your "free" system implies. Who'd get an MRI "just because?"
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imajoebob
209 Fans
02:01 AM on 07/07/2011
Doctors and facilities get sanctioned for "abusing" services or withholding treatment. The NHS has specific analytics to see if anyone over or under uses resources, and has corrective procedures to address it. So it is rare that it happens.
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bocajane
will post for badges!
53 Fans
12:25 AM on 07/07/2011
National Healthcare in the UK is not free. We pay for it through our taxes. No system is perfect, but I think the fact that the largest western democracy doesn't have healthcare for all its citizens is a national disgrace. Further, healthcare for profit is immoral.

50 million without healthcare - the USA should be ashamed!
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Freddie27
Liberal Gay Jewish Atheist
450 Fans
 
03:06 AM on 07/07/2011
First fan!
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sean62965
Do you really need my "micro-bio"?
667 Fans
08:03 PM on 07/07/2011
Have you been listening to the rest of us for the past decade? We've been saying that. But, the GOP has insisted that they just need to toughen up.
Theres a lot to be disgusted about over here.
Tort reform was all the rage while "w" was in office, even putting it in his SotU address. All it did was put more money in the inurance giants pockets, didn't lower Dr's insurance bills and put more people injured by doctors on the government teet.
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Moxo
Our enemies are in the GOP.
2134 Fans
10:18 PM on 07/06/2011
Prime Minister David Cameron has promised not to lose control of waiting times after Health Secretary Andrew Lansley scrapped the 18 week target set by Labour.
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In the US our Conservatives think folks without insurance should use the Emergency Room for their needs - apparently that is free, or so those Cons choose to believe.
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Blacksheep1
Keeping the Left honest, 7 days a week!
753 Fans
10:41 PM on 07/06/2011
No, we believe they should get jobs and help themselves.
It's easy, Liberals measure success by counting how many people they've helped. Conservatives measure their success by how many people don't need to be helped anymore.
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Weareonenow
Your Reality is a function of your mental software
549 Fans
11:11 PM on 07/06/2011
Please give me one prosperous democratic country that uses those conservative principles you are so proud of! i am waiting.
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Moxo
Our enemies are in the GOP.
2134 Fans
06:11 AM on 07/07/2011
No, we believe they should get jobs and help themselves­.
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You guys sure do believe in helping yourselves to our tax dollars - we have noticed.
Welfare for Big Oil... nothing for Grandma.
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SirFlatulent
0 Fans
06:37 PM on 07/07/2011
U.S. Conservative proposed solutions for the uninsured range from bartering livestock to the ultimate cop out of the Hospital Emergency Room:

"The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) is a U.S. Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. As a result of the act, patients needing emergency treatment can be discharged only under their own informed consent or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment." – Wikipedia

This default Conservative driven health care tactic has resulted in an unprecedented closing of E.R.'s in the U.S.: "Emergency rooms at commercially operated hospitals and those with low profit margins were almost twice as likely as other hospitals to close, Dr. Hsia and her colleagues found. So-called safety-net hospitals that serve disproportionate numbers of Medicaid patients and hospitals serving a large share of the poor were 40 percent more likely to close." – NYT
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Blacksheep1
Keeping the Left honest, 7 days a week!
753 Fans
09:17 PM on 07/06/2011
No, socialized medicine doesn't cause long waits and substandard care,, it's going to work fine.....
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ezwalker
Do your best, do what's right, observe golden rule
742 Fans
 
09:37 PM on 07/06/2011
Beats a blank, and there are 45.7 million people with a blank in this country. Your argument is stupid and you obviously have no compassion or empathy.
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Blacksheep1
Keeping the Left honest, 7 days a week!
753 Fans
10:43 PM on 07/06/2011
So the other 265 million of us should lose what we have because of that? How about we bring the 45 million up instead of bringing the 265 million down? Doesn't that make more sense?
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ecrichert12
151 Fans
11:41 PM on 07/06/2011
Blacksheep1 has empathy BECAUSE he doesn't want the system to deteriorate.

If you feel bad for people without insurance, send a fat check over to people without...don't mandate that other people they have to pay more to get a worse quality service.
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Moxo
Our enemies are in the GOP.
2134 Fans
10:18 PM on 07/06/2011
Hopefully you can afford major medical without bankrupting your family.
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Fi
A Gluten-Free life!
2277 Fans
08:50 PM on 07/06/2011
Of course they are going to get longer, the first thing this joke of a coalition Gov did was to get rid of the targets set under the Labour Gov, which were pretty much successful.
The objective is create chaos again, the tories always want that to create the illusion the NHS is'nt working.
We have been here before you know.
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Moxo
Our enemies are in the GOP.
2134 Fans
10:19 PM on 07/06/2011
The objective is create chaos again, the tories always want that to create the illusion the NHS is'nt working
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Same tactic Republicans use in America.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
RS
I think, therefore, I don't listen to Limbaugh
767 Fans
06:02 PM on 07/07/2011
Question: do the Tories control the mainstream media in the UK? In America, at least 90% of the mainstream media is corporate concentrated (i.e. Republican sympathizing).
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HeartScot
66 Fans
08:41 PM on 07/06/2011
NHS waiting lists getting longer under a Tory, sorry, Coallition Government,


What a bloody surprise!

All of you who voted the wrong way, not so smarmy now, eh!
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