Four in 10 NHS patients in England feel their health has worsened while waiting to be admitted to hospital.
While latest data from NHS England puts waiting lists for treatment at 7.6 million, the Care Quality Commission’s Adult Inpatient Survey for 2022 shone a light on patient experiences enduring these waits.
A total of 133 NHS trusts in England took part and 63,224 patients who were in hospital in November 2022 responded to the CQC survey. This was a response rate of 40%, with all data collected between January and April of this year.
Of these respondents, just over four in 10 planned care patients (41%) felt their health worsened while waiting for admission to hospital, though a further half reported no change.
Almost a quarter (22%) of elective patients said they would like to have been admitted ‘a bit sooner’ and 17% ‘a lot sooner’. This compared with 20% and 16% respectively in 2021. The remaining 61% said they ‘did not mind waiting as long as they did’, compared with 65% in 2021.
Nearly one in five respondents (18%) felt they had to wait ‘far too long’ to get to a bed on a ward after admission, a figure which has increased significantly compared to 2021 (15%) and 2020 (8%), representing a 10-percentage point increase over two years.
Need to pull every lever
David Hare, chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), described some of the findings in the survey as “concerning”.
“It really drives home the impact that the growing waiting lists are having on patients and their quality of life – with four in 10 patients reporting their health has deteriorated while they’ve waited to be admitted,” Hare said.
“With 7.6m people on the growing waiting lists and with winter in full view, and the inevitable pressure that it always brings, with more patients likely to be cancelled or postponed, we need to be pulling on every lever at our disposal to bring the waiting lists down.”
Hare added the independent sector stands ready to increase its support of the NHS.
“There is capacity to deliver more high-quality care, and we are committed to working with the NHS to get patients the treatment they need as quickly as possible,” he continued.
“This highlights how important it is that patients are aware of their rights to choose providers, including those in the independent sector, to deliver their NHS care, all paid for at NHS prices.
“We know many patients want to be given a choice as it can dramatically reduce their wait for NHS care.
“But too often patients are unclear that they have the right to choose a health care provider to deliver their NHS care – whether an NHS organisation or an independent sector one – free at the point of use.”