On the same day that junior doctors in England are staging their longest strike yet, new NHS statistics show that the service continues to struggle with patient demand. The number of waits for treatment – including elective operations and procedures – has now reached a record 7.5 million, according to figures published this morning. Over 385,000 of these appointments have been on the waiting list for more than a year, an increase on figures at the end of April. Meanwhile, more than 11,000 were delayed for 78 weeks or more, even though waits of this length were meant to be abolished by April.
Waiting times for the majority of non-emergency patients worsened in May from the previous month and the health service also failed to meet its target that 92 per cent of patients should receive treatment within 18 weeks. Less than two thirds of patients were actually treated in this time.
For the first time, the NHS has also estimated the number of actual patients on a waiting list, as opposed to the total number of procedures delayed. The NHS believes that 6.3 million people are currently waiting for care – around a tenth of the English population.
The estimate has been taken from NHS England’s ‘Waiting List Minimum Data Set’, and its publication has prompted calls for the health service to routinely release this figure. At the same time, cynics ponder whether the 6.3 million figure has been planted by the service to mislead and distract from steadily increasing waits. This may be Rishi Sunak’s only way of saying he has successfully cut NHS backlogs – by changing the waiting list definition.
The combination of bank holidays and industrial action has presented the health service with some of its toughest months this year, and throughout this patient demand has continued to rise. The number of A&E attendances and category 1 ambulance incidents (the most serious) rose in June.
These figures come as junior doctors in England stage their third round of industrial action, with a five day walkout starting today. Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director of NHS England, warns that this ‘incredibly challenging period of strike action’ will most likely ‘have the biggest impact yet’. Consultants, the most senior doctors, are due to walk out next Thursday and Friday, and a radiographer strike is imminent. There are fears that the triple blow of industrial action could irreversibly cripple the service and junior doctors have described the unwillingness of the government to re-enter pay talks as ‘baffling’.
While criticism has been levelled at the BMA for suggesting that striking doctors rest rather than stand on picket lines, doctors have labelled the government stand-off as ‘frustrating’. ‘What is unreasonable is the government’s belligerence and inability to come up with a credible plan to address our workforce crisis,’ Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctor committee, told the BBC this morning. Trivedi said that doctors are asking to be paid ‘£19 to £20 an hour’. ‘Even the public, the patients that you talk about, know that that’s not an unreasonable thing to ask for.'
Drawing parallels with the Scottish government’s offer to junior doctors north of the border, Trivedi commended the discussions that had taken place and the ‘credible’ outcome which had been achieved as a result. ‘Unlike that, our government is refusing to do that.’
Doctors are demanding ‘full pay restoration’, which amounts to a 35 per cent increase on current pay levels. Medics in England voted to reject the government’s pay offer of a 5 per cent rise earlier this year, prompting further industrial action. Today, however, Sunak has announced plans to award public sector workers – including both junior doctors and consultants – with pay rises of 6 per cent, a figure that is still nowhere near what the BMA want.
Tensions between health secretary Steve Barclay and the BMA are not at all close to dissipating, but differences need to be put aside if there is any real desire to improve the health service. If cutting waiting lists really is at the top of the government’s priority list, Barclay urgently needs to re-enter talks with the doctors’ union. The stand-off benefits no one – least of all patients.
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