BBC Radio 4 Podcast – The Backlog
Excellent Radio 4 podcast from Natasha Loder, Health Policy Editor at The Economist on the state of the backlog. Our very own Dr Rob Findlay, Director of Strategic Solutions at Insource is one of the experts asked to speak on the key issues. These include 10 years of austerity and limited NHS funding since 2010, an ageing society, and poor western diet contributing to obesity. It also includes low number of beds per capita compared with other European countries and running the system ‘hot’.
Dr Findlay discussed the poor-quality data on the number of people waiting (a subject close to our hearts here at Insource) and six million being only the tip of the iceberg. “The healthcare system is bad at tracking urgent care that has been delayed and waits for follow-up appointments are not counted at all” he stated.
In addition, millions of patients cautiously avoided visiting GPs for referral to hospital during the pandemic. But nobody knows how many of these patients are going to come back, or what condition they will be in when they do. These ‘missing GP referrals’ could number as many as another six million bringing the total to 12 million according to Jeremy Hunt MP, the former health secretary and chair of the Health and Social Care Committee in Parliament.
Numbers announced during the programme include 1 in 4 people on the waiting list in England, 1 in 5 in Wales and 1 in 3 in Northern Ireland. Behind every number is a person needing care – care that the NHS is struggling to provide. The patients interviewed for the programme had harrowing stories to tell about their pain, and their risk of dying every day their care is delayed. Dr Findlay calculated that the NHS would need to sustain 10%-20% increased activity and hold that for most of this decade to get back safely to 18 week waits.
In its new Elective Recovery Plan, announced this week, the government has set a target for 30% more elective activity by 2024-25, with nine million more tests done at new diagnostic centres across the country. And it has set a target of 2025 for a maximum wait of one year for care. New technology will no doubt help but will lack of staff and the current 70,000 NHS vacancies make those targets unachievable? Those are the topics Natasha will address in the second and third parts of this series.
All in all, a good listen, albeit chilling with some particularly moving testimony from ICU nurses recalling the effect of low staffing numbers during the pandemic.
