Contending with the pandemic has left the NHS “on its knees” but the government is failing to address workforce shortages, according to The King’s Fund.
The think tank was commenting on the latest NHS England hospital performance statistics for September and October which revealed 5.83m people were waiting for treatment by the end of September, up from 5.72m in August and 1.5m in September last year.
The figure includes 120,000 patients who have waited more than two years for treatment.
The King’s Fund noted that while NHS staff were working flat out to tackle this backlog, around 1.5m people – half the population of Wales – were joining the waiting list each month.
And it criticised the Conservative government for failing to address the critical aspect of the NHS workforce.
The strain is already showing as a survey from Engage Britain in September showed one in five people had turned to private healthcare because they cannot access the treatment they urgently need on the NHS.
Chronic workforce shortages
Deborah Ward, senior analyst at The King’s Fund, said chronic workforce shortages were heaping further pressure on overstretched staff exhausted from the pandemic and will be the rate-limiting factor in the government’s ambitions to tackle the backlog and boost NHS activity and performance.
“Yet workforce has become a blind spot for the government; without a multi-year, fully funded workforce strategy the health and care system continues to face declining performance,” she said.
Figures also revealed one million 999 calls were answered, with ambulances taking an average of over nine minutes to respond to the most life threatening situations against a seven minute target.
Ward added that the statistics revealed the worst performance since current records began for ambulance calls, A&Es and waits for planned hospital care.
“In a normal year any one of these would ring alarm bells; taken together before winter has even begun they suggest a health and care system running hot for such a sustained period whilst still dealing with Covid-19, it is now on its knees,” she said.
“Patients are facing very long waits to be seen and admitted in A&E departments; performance against the four-hour target for major A&Es stands at a record low of 61.9% against a 95% target, while the majority of hospital trusts are now also reporting patients waiting over 12 hours to be admitted.”
“We must remember these are not just big numbers – they are people living with pain and anxiety awaiting treatment, in some cases for more than two years,” she added.
