It was obvious from the moment that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announced the abolition of the 18-week target from referral to treatment that National Health Service waiting times would rise.
So it is no surprise that patients are starting to see long waiting times returning.
It is not a shock that statistics show that, compared to a year ago, almost 2,400 more people are waiting longer than 18 weeks for hospital treatment.
The figures are even worse if you are waiting for a diagnostic test. In May 2010, 3,378 patients waited more than six weeks for their tests. This had more than quadrupled to 15,667 by May 2011.
Official NHS waiting time data also shows that an extra 200,000 patients had to wait more than four hours in accident and emergency departments before being seen.
Now it has been revealed that managers, under orders to make massive efficiency savings, are restricting treatment, imposing minimum waiting times and actually refusing to put patients on waiting lists. Surgery for cataracts, hips, knees and tonsils are all being rationed. A cap is being imposed on GPs as to how many patients they can refer to some hospitals.
According to the Co-operation and Competition Panel – an independent watchdog set up in January 2009 – these tactics are being used to “excessively constrain patients’ right to choose where to be operated on”.
One of the panel’s main jobs is to “advise on the application of the Department of Health’s Principles and Rules of Co-operation and Competition”.
Although you may not realise it, “co-operation may have a negative impact on NHS-funded services”. Tell that to the doctors and nurses and other medical staff who co-operate with each other to ensure the best services for patients.
Cutting waiting lists and waiting times was one of the last Labour Government’s biggest and best achievements. Lists and times dropped from 1,150,004 people waiting an average 13.2 weeks to be admitted to hospital for surgery in 1997 to 552,960 people waiting an average 3.9 weeks by 2009.
The waiting time for cataract surgery dropped from a staggering two years in 1996 to just three months in 2009. But I fear this is likely to change with rationed cataract operations.
If the NHS continues to go backwards at this rate, it looks as though it won’t be long before we return to the bad old days when people waited months, even more than a year, to get certain treatments.
Before Labour came to power in 1997, waits of more than 18 months were not uncommon. Even by 2000, there were still 125,000 people waiting more than nine months.
But don’t worry. Help is on the way. Lansley has launched a new scheme known as “Local HealthWatch” which will “give patients a real say over how their local health service is run”.
Presumably, with the strength of a local HealthWatch behind them, patients will be able to be treated when and where they want. Local HealthWatch groups will replace LINks – Local Involvement Networks – set up in April 2008 to improve services for patients. But, as they were the brainchild of the previous Government, naturally they had to be scrapped and replaced with coalition-inspired patient support groups. (Officially LINks are not being scrapped, they are being “evolved” into Local HealthWatch.
Will this name change “strengthen the collective voice of patients and the public”, as both LINKs and Local HealthWatch aim to do? Was it really necessary? Surely this is another example of reorganisation for reorganisation’s sake? Even more time and money being wasted on forcing through a shake-up that isn’t needed? Although the time and money spent on this restructuring is a drop in the ocean compared to that spent on shaking up the NHS as a whole.
Will it save the NHS money in the long run? Will it improve services and reduce waiting times for patients? Only time will tell.
