Patients with NHS appointments may now be able to shorten their waiting times for treatment if they are willing to travel to another hospital, NHS England said on Aug. 10.
It’s part of the service’s effort to reduce the record-high backlog from COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and nine months of back-to-back industrial actions by doctors and nurses.
Clinicians will upload details of patients on their waiting lists to an online “matching” platform if they are willing to travel, and NHS or independent health care providers in other areas can offer suitable slots.
The details will include how far a patient is willing to travel, the severity of the illness, their body mass index, and how long they have been on the waiting list.
The platform was initially started in January for patients who need a hospital admission; they make up around a fifth of people on waiting lists. It’s now being expanded to include cancer, diagnostic checks, and outpatient appointments.
NHS England stated that it mainly uses the system to help patients who have been waiting the longest, and it aims to “virtually eliminate 65 week waits by April 2024.”
According to NHS England, it has expanded the use of the independent sector by more than a third since 2021, increasing the number of appointments and procedures from 65,000 a week to over 90,000 a week.
“Despite significant pressure on services, NHS staff have already made incredible progress against our elective recovery plan, and this smart new tool will help us to continue to reduce long waits for patients," NHS Chief Executive Amanda Pritchard said.
The NHS will “continue to embrace the latest innovations, like this one, to deliver the best possible for care for patients,” Ms. Pritchard said.
The platform will help “thousands more” receive checkups and treatment sooner, Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said.
“We are using all tools at our disposal to bring down waiting lists—one of the government’s top five priorities—while this platform will also help us to drive better collaboration across the NHS and the independent sector to treat patients more quickly,” he said.
Record-High Backlog
The NHS backlog skyrocketed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, and the NHS’s attempt to clear the backlog has been further hampered over the past nine months as doctors, nurses, ambulance staff, and other health care workers went on strike over pay and conditions.At the end of May, a record 7.47 million people were on the waiting list, up from 4.5 million in May 2019.
According to NHS England, around 778,000 hospital appointments and nearly a half-million staff shifts have been disrupted because of the industrial actions.
NHS Providers has said the number is upward of 835,000 when all delayed acute, community, and mental health appointments are included.
NHS leaders have said the list will grow longer along with more walkouts.
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.
Junior doctors may also strike again next month if British Medical Association members vote to give the union a new six-month mandate.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said on Wednesday that the real impact could be double the headline figures because when an operation is rearranged, it’s knocking out another less urgent operation.
