The NHS has not met the 18-week target for people to receive planned treatment in England since February 2016
UK MPs have ruled that the government has overseen ‘years of decline’ in achieving waiting time targets for elective NHS care and cancer treatment. Consequently, staff are facing a backlog in the wake of the pandemic.
The cross-party committee of MPs has warned that the waiting list for treatment – currently 6.1 million people – is likely to grow for the next few years, while performance compared to targets will be ‘poor’.
The NHS has not met the 18-week target for people to receive planned treatment such as knee replacements in England since February 2016, while the number of people waiting more than a year or two has risen. A record 6.1 million patients are currently waiting for treatments such as hip or knee replacements or cataract surgery.
Since September, between 7.6 million and 9.1 million people have not been referred for planned care, and between 240,000 and 740,000 have not been given urgent referrals for suspected cancer. Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “The Department of Health and Social Care has overseen a long-term decline in elective and critical cancer care that is dragging our NHS and the heroic staff down.
“We are extremely concerned that there is no real plan to turn a large cash injection, for elective care and capital costs of dangerously crumbling facilities, into better outcomes for people waiting for life-saving or quality-of-life improving treatment. Nor is it obvious that the department finally understands that its biggest problem, and the only solution to all its problems, is the way it manages its greatest resource: our heroic NHS staff.”
“Exhausted and demoralised, they’ve emerged from two hellish years only to face longer and longer lists of sicker people. And this is compounded by staffing shortages in a number of professional areas,” she added.
