NHS Waiting List Tops Seven Million for First Time Leaving One in Eight People in England Waiting for Treatment
The NHS waiting list for routine operations has topped seven million for the first time. This is up from 6.8 million in July and is the highest number since records began in August 2007. The Mail has more.
It means one in eight people in England are now waiting for NHS treatment. This figure includes almost 390,000 patients who’ve been forced to wait over a year for treatment. This is up from 377,689 at the end of July, and is the equivalent of one in 18 people on the entire waiting list.
It comes as after both the Government and NHS England pledged to eliminate all waits of more than a year by March 2025. Some 2,646 people in England have been waiting more than two years to start routine hospital treatment at the end of August. This is down slightly from 2,885 at the end of July and a peak of 23,778 in January 2022.
The Government and NHS England set the ambition to eliminate all waits of more than two years, except when it is the patient’s choice or for complex cases requiring specialist treatment, by July this year.
Meanwhile, more than 30,000 A&E patients faced 12-hour waits – a record high.
In addition to a raft of NHS data today there are reports that some heart attack patients are now facing an eight hour wait for an ambulance in some parts of the country.
Professor Mama Mamas, a consultant cardiologist in Stoke and Professor of Cardiology at Keele University, told the Independent the situation was a “shambles”.
“I was on call this weekend and I was seeing delays of eight hours. It was several people, three or four this weekend with heart attacks that waited between four and eight hours… it’s a national disgrace that we’re in this situation,” he said.
“For the first time in my career, I’ve publicly said, ‘maybe it’s better to just to get someone to drive you in’.”
NHS data itself shows average response time in September for ambulances in England dealing with the most urgent incidents, defined as calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries, was nine minutes and 19 seconds.
This is up from nine minutes and eight seconds in August, though below the record longest average response time for this category of nine minutes and 35 seconds, which was reached in July. The target standard response time for urgent incidents is seven minutes.
Paramedics also took just under 48 minutes on average to respond to category two emergencies, which include heart attacks and strokes – more than double the target of 18 minutes.
Linked to the long waits for medical treatment, the number of people in the U.K. out of work due to long-term sickness has hit a record high of 2.5 million, leaving over a fifth of working age people now economically inactive for one reason or another.
Excess deaths for non-Covid reasons have also been running high since the spring, many of them heart and circulatory system related.
Britain is clearly not at all well and struggling to address all the health problems that are arising. What is responsible for the ill health and problems in the health service is not wholly clear, with different experts blaming the virus, the restrictions and the vaccines to varying degrees. The problems only look to be getting more acute as the winter approaches.
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“What is responsible for the ill health and problems in the health service is not wholly clear”
Dunno, some nutjob conspiracy theorists on a website called Lockdown Sceptics predicted lockdowns and “vaccines” would have this effect, so it can’t be that.
How’s the Swedish NHS doing? If it was covid causing this, they’d have the same issues there.
The NHS is broken.
The numbers will never get any better either, because this huge wall of patient demand has become a bow-wave in which you always have a 150% demand for today and tomorrow, and every day after. At least when your early diagnosis of cancer has now become ‘don’t bother booking holidays for next year’ because we couldn’t see you, you can take solice that the NHS is still very much on its guard against lack of inclusion and diversity. I found comfort in a bus shelter advert for the NHS ‘Wellbeing’ services for people who are feeling a bit stressed as well
This oganisation has become spastic. It bureaocracy and sloth has almost ground large sections of it to a halt. It has become circular, both the cause and the effect of its inability to do simple things. It cannot do ‘A’, because ‘B’ is not being done, and ‘B’ isn’t being done because ‘A” isn’t working. We all know the solution begins with breaking it up and a fundamental rethink and re-alignment of its priorities. None of this will happen
Gosh. It’s only taken 74 years for people to realise that.
A propos of the NHS I got a text today telling me that as I suffer from a health condition that puts me at greater risk of falling seriously ill with flu, I am eligible for a free vaccine. The last serious health condition I had was 20 years ago, long since done and dusted, and I have never had any such text before. Are they having trouble flogging flu vaccines?
Had my second reminder by text today as well ToF. First one a months ago. Both ignored…
The flu jab take up is about the same as last year for adults, except it is down about 10% for adults aged <65 with a vulnerability. I’m surprised there’s not been a more negative response, given the mess of the covid jabs.
The response for children (aged 2-4) isn’t so ‘good’, with vaccination rates down about 1/3rd compared with previous years.
Early days yet, though.
If we get a problem with influenza this year I’m sure they’ll blame the lower vaccination rates, and in particular they’ll blame the children. Our authorities have a habit of blaming those aged under 30 for all the problems that arise, when in reality they’re seldom to blame.
It would be a mistake to assume anyone in or connected with the NHS has any clue about what they are doing.
‘… the number of people in the U.K. out of work due to long-term sickness has hit a record high of 2.5 million…’
And this is a surprise to whom?
This is due to a new pandemic: Long Furlough.
It’s caused by paying healthy people 80% of their wages not to work and stay at home. Symptoms includes: round the clock binge watching of Netflix, marathon stints playing computer games, trawling new depths of the banal on social media, not getting dressed, living on takeaway home deliveries.
I work as a Paramedic. It’s absolutely insane at the moment. Our day consists of getting one or two elderly patients and sitting at the hospital all day watching Netflix. Virtually all the patients we are dealing with are elderly and it’s not because they are seriously ill they are being sent in but because the GP’s refuse to go out to them and, helpfully, tell them to ring 999 instead. If we are out there’s usually a mini surge around 4-6pm as the GP’s think ‘F*** that, I’m off home’ and so call 999 and dump them all on us. NHS 111 are even worse in that you literally only have to cough down the phone to them and they send an Ambulance. The GP’s are the villains in all this, they all work part time (Thanks to the 2004 GP pay deal) and are now on a go slow using Covid as the excuse. What no one understands is once dumped on us we simply take them to the hospital. The reason has nothing to do with their condition but simply because if we leave them at home, and something happens to them, regardless of whether it’s our… Read more »
I notice an increase in ambulance sirens whenever there is a round of jabbing. Queues outside jab centres one day, an increase in ambulance sirens the next few days. Is this based on reality or is it confirmation bias on my part?
Unlike a lot of medics I told the truth from the start that I have yet to see even 1 single solitary serious Covid case since the ‘pandemic’ started. As for vaccine injuries, i’ll still tell the truth, and that is it’s difficult to tell.That’s because we mainly take in elderly patients who have numerous chronic illnesses so it’s almost impossible to tell for sure but there are a few unusual cases. For example, the other day I went to a 96 year old with cardiac problems. No surprise there but most cardiac problems usually occur in people who have a family history. This lady was extremely well, on few medications and had no family history of cardiac problems. I noticed that the cardiac problem first occurred in March 2021, a few months after the first jab and had continued ever since. The latest episode of chest pain came the day after she had both the booster and the Flu jab. Is it coincidence, or the vaccine, or just old age? As I said it’s difficult to tell. Where I have noticed something unusual is in my friends and acquaintances with about 5 having died recently at an unusually young… Read more »
Thank you. Last year I was taken to hospital in an ambulance with a suspected heart problem after a 111 referral. The paramedic asked me whether I had taken the vaccine. This left me pondering the reason for the question and whether any statistics are being collected.
Your gut feeling is right, there is something definitely not right about these injections. I have met three people who think they have suffered serious adverse reactions after the injection. One with a bout of depression, another with chronic fatigue and someone who lost most of one kidney due to blood clots. Then there are all the additional sudden unexplained deaths, like these for example: –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-63129353
Clap for the NHS!
Are the unjabbed now allowed to work in the NHS?
In Australia, those without double or triple jabs are unable to work in any branch of healthcare (including naturopaths, acupuncturists, chiropractors).
This has led to a shortage of workers, though I believe the problem is also that those who have been sacked or resigned are the critical thinkers, leaving those remaining in the system more likely to be the uncritical automatons, who naturally provide an inferior service to their patients.
In addition we’ve got another problem in the Ambulance Service that in addition to driving out the experienced Paramedics they’ve replaced them with what I can only describe as children. These kids have been recruited straight from their summer holiday jobs at McDonald are are now the majority in the service.
They’ve done their extensive training and sincerely believe that they are mini mobile GP’s who can diagnose any illness and decide who goes to hospital and who doesn’t.
As you can imagine, it’s been a disaster and serious incidents have skyrocketed where they’ve left people at home who should have gone to hospital and then died at home.
It’s also these kids that were the Paramedics the general public would have seen telling everyone that Covid was terrible and how many serious Covid cases they’d seen when it was all actually hysterical inexperience talking.
Yes, they are. The threat of mandates was removed after this heartening incident: –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOlEYcd1nyI
Were you thinking of applying? The NHS can do with all the critical thinkers it can get.
Thanks for the offer, though the plethora of DS articles on the NHS, doesn’t fill me with enthusiasm.
Frying pan to fire?
Fair dinkum comment.
Time to allow and encourage the private sector to do what it does well, production line surgeries such as cataracts and joint replacements, allowing the NHS to do the acute stuff. I’d also like to see a campaign about personal responsibilities for health, especially targeting obesity and its consequences. It rankles that I’m paying for other people’s life style choices like excessive drinking and drug use. Bring on compulsory health insurance.
It’s wrong to talk about the NHS in a way that suggests that problems are equally as bad in all the nations of the UK. This allows commentators to blame everything on the Conservative government. Where I live in Scotland, health is a devolved matter (I’m not sure of the exact situation in Wales and N. Ireland). It would be useful if people criticising the NHS, and using statistics to show how it’s failing patients, compare statistics from all 4 UK nations. My experience is that NHS Scotland is in a dire state. This can’t be blamed on a Tory government, but is the fault of the SNP, and if the situation is similar in Wales it would be the fault of the Labour administration. Since Health is likely to be a major issue at the next General Election the public needs to be able to decide if parties other than the Tories can be trusted to improve the NHS.