With the events over the last two years as they were, the general election in December 2019 seems such a long time ago. In the run up to that election, a key focus for many of the parties’ campaigns was pledging support and funding to the NHS following the release of annual statistics demonstrating that the NHS was continuing to fail to meet some key targets in relation to treatment waiting times. You can see our insight into the issues at that time here: Why is the NHS Such a Big Focus in the Upcoming Election?
Even at that stage, the NHS looked to be close to a crisis point with a huge number of job vacancies and insufficient budget increases. Over the last 3 years, the NHS is even further from meeting these targets.
Why is this? Simply put, because of a limited supply of healthcare provision aiming to support an increasing demand. An ageing population which costs more to treat combined with insufficient budget increases and huge numbers of job vacancies, as well as a pandemic which still requires a huge number of those resources that are available.
The NHS is now in crisis and arguably at a breaking point. The statistics to November 2022 have recently been published and when compared with 2019, they show that many patients are waiting even longer.
| Target | Quarter 3 to December 2019 | Quarter 3 to December 2022 | |
| A&E – % of patients being treated or admitted in 4 hours or less | 95% | 81.6% | 54.8% |
| A&E – number of patients waiting more than 12 hours for treatment or admission | N/A | So low it was not recorded | Over 1,000 per day |
| Cancer Treatment – % of patients starting their cancer treatment within 62 days of urgent GP referral | 85% | 77.2% | 60.5% |
| Routine Operation – % of patients receiving their routine operation within 18 weeks of referral | 92% | 84.4% | 59.4% (in Sept 2022) |
Daily A&E admissions have now returned to pre-pandemic levels even though COVID-19 is very much still an issue for many NHS Trusts to contend with also. This long wait is also being experienced by Ambulances who are also having to wait hours at Emergency Departments to unload patients. This has a knock on effect with their ability to respond to calls meaning that response times have increased significantly. Target response times now range from an increase to 10 minutes for Life-Threatening Category 1 calls to 10 hours for less urgent category 4 calls.
Of course many of these increases are because there are not enough resources to go round and some of these targets have become so unattainable that there are new Clinical Standards being trialled. If successful these would replace at least some of the targets.
And last week Chris Witty, Jenny Harries, Jonathan Van-Tam and others published a paper aimed at future UK Chief Medical Officers, National Medical Directors and public health leaders setting out potential long-term consequences of the decisions made during the pandemic. In particular the report has warned of the possibility that the UK will face excessive mortality and morbidity rates for non-Covid conditions because of delays in seeking and starting treatment caused by Covid and decisions to re-prioritise resources. This would include treatment for cancer, heart conditions and others.
For those who have received treatment and may be looking to make a claim for medical negligence, there can be a fine line between treatment that was performed poorly and is therefore negligent and treatment which was incapable of being performed because there are insufficient resources. The latter unfortunately cannot be deemed negligent and compensated, this is an issue of public policy which the government must deal with. It is important to have an experienced team to help you navigate what treatment may be negligent and what is not.
For more information and to find out how we can help you, please contact us on 0345 646 0406 or fill in our online enquiry form and a member of our Team will be in touch.