The number of people waiting to start NHS treatment in England has hit more than six million after increasing by more than 100,000 in a single month, according to official data.
Latest figures show the number of patients awaiting the start of treatment at the end of December 2021 was 6.1 million patients.
This was up from 5,995,156 in November before the full impact of the Omicron Covid-19 variant hit. The figures also show 310,813 patients were waiting more than a year, up from 306,996 in November.
Of those patients waiting to begin treatment at the close of December 2021, 63.8% had been waiting for more than 18 weeks, up from 34.5% in November.
For patients waiting to start treatment at the end of December 2021, the median wait time was 12 and a half weeks, up from 11 and a half weeks in November.
Earlier this week, health secretary Sajid Javid told Parliament that waiting lists would not fall until Spring 2024 while setting out plans to eliminate waits of longer than a year for elective care by March 2025.
The plan commits to increased use of private hospitals, which raised concerns from the British Medical Association, which also warned the biggest limiting factor to the effectiveness of the plan would be workforce shortages.
‘Glaring omission’
Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at The King’s Fund, said the latest figures highlighted the scale of the challenge facing the NHS to deliver on government targets set out earlier this week.
“There are now more than six million people on hospital waiting lists, with over 20,000 people waiting more than two years for treatment,” he said.
“The government has provided additional funding and agreed a new plan with the NHS to improve hospital waits, but the glaring omission remains a strategy to ensure there are enough staff to make shorter waits a reality.”
Anandaciva added the data also laid bare the impact of the unique combination of winter pressures and Omicron.
“Staff absences effectively doubled the vacancy rates for NHS staff and had a knock-on impact for patient services,” Anandaciva said.
“Performance against the waiting time target for A&Es remains poor with twelve hour waits in A&E reaching record highs and no NHS organisations with major A&E departments achieving the national performance target.”
And according to Anandaciva, while the NHS has managed to successfully tackle long waiting lists in the past when given sufficient investment and realistic timescales, its current efforts are being hampered by “chronic” staff shortages.
“Even now local services are building new surgical hubs and new diagnostic facilities to improve services for patients,” Anandaciva said.
“But for too many years the NHS has been hamstrung by chronic staff shortages and without enough staff the new targets for waiting lists and cancer treatment will remain aspirational and performance in other key services like A&E will continue to deteriorate.
“To improve patient care the government must move beyond repeating manifesto pledges and instead come forward with a fully funded workforce strategy.”
