Virus crisis sends Hartlepool hospital waiting times soaring

NHS statistics show 34 patients had been on the waiting list for over a year for elective treatment at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust at the end of August – the highest figure since comparable records began in 2011.

Of the 12,013 patients on the list for treatment at the Trust at the end of August, 20% had been waiting for more than the 18-week target for non-urgent elective care

NHS trusts are expected to ensure no more than eight per cent of patients wait longer.

Last August, the Trust – which runs The University Hospital of Hartlepool – had no patients waiting for 12 months.

Nationally, 46% of the 4.2 million people waiting at the end of the month had overshot the 18-week target time, although this an improvement on 53% in July.

In England, the number of people waiting a year or more hit 111,000, a near tenfold increase from the 1,236 in August 2019 and the highest figure since 2008.

The King's Fund think tank says the NHS has a “mountain to climb” to tackle delays caused by Covid-19.

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst, said: “NHS staff are working hard to restore services and find innovative new ways to care for patients, but as these figures show, there is a mountain to climb before waits for routine NHS care return to pre-pandemic levels.

“It now seems unlikely that the highly ambitious targets set for the recovery of NHS performance over autumn will be met, and it is important to be honest with patients and the public about how long people are likely to have to wait for care.”

A combination of the huge treatment backlog, rising Covid-19 hospital admissions, an expected winter surge in demand on services and exhausted and overstretched staff means NHS leaders are “braced for a torrid winter”, he added.

An NHS spokesman said: “Hospitals are carrying out more than a million routine appointments and operations per week, with around three times the levels of elective patients admitted to hospital than in April, as they continue to make progress on getting services back to pre-Covid levels."