England’s Hospital Waiting List Grows Again To 6.36 Million

More patients than ever before are waiting for elective procedures in England, with the number in line for treatment hitting 6.36 million according to the latest figures.

The data, which represents the size of the waiting list for surgeries and other planned treatments in March, is an increase of 180,000 on February’s results.

The overall waiting list has grown every month since May 2020, when it stood at 3.85 million.

That figure isn’t a perfect representation of the number of people waiting for treatments, as some patients will be counted more than once if they’re on the list for multiple procedures.

Planned care — which covers all manner of procedures from cataract surgery to hip replacements — continues to be hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Hospitals across the country have been forced to pause and reconfigure elective care during times of particular pressure.

But despite continued growth in the total number of waiters, there is a glimmer of good news to be found in March’s data.

One of the biggest concerns throughout the pandemic has been the emergence of extremely long waiters. Before Covid-19 hit, it was rare for hospitals to have any patients waiting more than a year for procedures. Now, thousands of patients have been waiting for more than two.

Drop in extremely long waits

Although their conditions may not be life-threatening, many will experience pain and reduced quality of life as they wait for care. Some will even see their conditions deteriorate.

March’s data reveals the number of two-year waiters has fallen from 23,281 to 16,796 since February. The number is still very high, but it is a massive drop on the previous month, which itself saw a much more modest decrease of around 500 extremely long waiters.

There has been a determined push from hospitals to prioritise these extremely long waiters. On a national level, health policymakers want to eliminate two-year waits by July. But how realistic this is remains to be seen.

March also shows a small drop in the median length of time people are waiting for treatment — a figure that’s hovered at between 10 and 13 weeks since September 2020. This number fell from 13.1 weeks in February back to 12 in March.

Before the pandemic, it tended to sit between 6.5 and 7.5 weeks.

Similarly, the number of patients treated within 18 weeks grew to around 3.97 million – 62.4% of people on the overall waiting list. Although a slightly higher percentage of the waiting list — 62.6% — was treated within 18 weeks in February, this equated to about 3.87 million people.

This percentage difference reflects the fact that the number of people referred for hospital treatment has grown month-on-month.

It’s unclear whether these modest improvements will be maintained as more data is released next month.

Emergency care crisis

In April, for example, hospitals were battling extreme pressures in urgent and emergency care, with abulances regularly backed up outside units across the country as they waited for beds to free up. This is likely to have had knock-on effects for elective care.

This ongoing crisis, which health leaders fear has caused serious patient harm and possibly even deaths, saw a number of hospital and ambulance trusts declare “critical incidents” in April.