The number of cancelled hospital appointments caused by NHS strikes will soon reach 1 million and are only “the tip of the iceberg,” the head of the NHS Confederation has said.
It comes as junior doctors, who make up around half of all doctors in the NHS, are about to begin another four-day action on Friday in an ongoing dispute over pay.
Consultant doctors are set to walk out for two days later this month and two days next month.
Over 750,000 Appointments Delayed
According to NHS England, the last junior doctors strike, which lasted five days in July, resulted in the delay of 102,000 hospital appointments, while consultant doctors’ two-day strike knocked off 65,500 appointments.Overall, around 778,000 hospital appointments and nearly half a million staff shifts have been disrupted during the last nine months owing to back-to-back industrial actions by nurses, doctors, and other staff, NHS figures show.
NHS Providers has said the number is upward of 835,000 when all delayed acute, community, and mental health appointments are included.
NHS national medical director Sir Stephen Powis said a recent High Court ruling, which bans employers using agency staff to cover striking workers, will pose “additional challenge” to hospitals this weekend.
“It is also a period of time where NHS staff often take annual leave, so there are already gaps in the workforce,” Dr. Powis said in a statement.
NHS Confederation: Real Impact May Be Double the Headline Figure
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the headline figures don’t take into account the knock-on effect of the industrial action.“Industrial action damage control has become a dangerous ‘business as usual’ for the NHS,“ he said, adding that some leaders reported frustrations from patients ”who have had their procedures cancelled, often multiple times.”
“We fear this might get worse before it gets better, as the number of cancellations due to industrial action will soon reach one million,” he said.
“This is a huge number, but we know this is the tip of the iceberg as the official figures don’t fully take into account all the planned elective activity that would otherwise have been delivered.”
Mr. Taylor said NHS Confederation members suggested the cancellations may have a “two for one effect” because when an operation is rearranged, it’s knocking out another less urgent operation.
“But strike data just isn’t recording that so we could actually be seeing, in an absolute worst-case scenario, industrial action causing double the number of cancellations than what is being reported,” he said.
Months of industrial actions have severely hampered the NHS’s attempt to catch up with the skyrocketing backlog as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns. At the end of May, a record 7.47 million people were on the waiting list, compared to 4.5 million in May 2019.
Drs. Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, said the government hasn’t spoken to them for almost three months to provide a new pay offer.
“Since then, we have stated repeatedly that our door remains open for talks at any time, as long as we could be presented with a credible offer that would address pay erosion of more than a quarter over the last 15 years,” they said.
The doctors blamed the government for wasting time, and said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has “[added] insult to injury” by blaming doctors for rising waiting lists.
“Sooner or later the government will accept that they need to work with doctors rather than against them. We are here to talk when they do,” they said.
The BMA has said doctors’ pay has been cut in real terms by between a quarter and a third in the last 14 years and called for an above-inflation pay rise.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We have repeatedly urged the BMA to put patients first by ending their hugely disruptive strikes immediately.
“We’re giving doctors a fair and reasonable pay rise, as recommended by the independent pay review body, with doctors in training receiving an average increase of around 8.8 [percent]— which is above what most in the public and private sectors are receiving, and consultants receiving a 6 [percent] pay rise,” the spokesperson said.
“We are working with NHS England to put in place contingency plans to protect patient safety. The NHS will prioritise resources to protect the most urgent care while ensuring patients who have waited the longest for elective care and cancer surgery are prioritised.”
