Hospital waiting lists grow by 13% in England
BMJ 1997; 315 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.315.7107.501 (Published 30 August 1997) Cite this as: BMJ 1997;315:501
Emergency measures to ease winter pressures on the NHS are being ordered by ministers as the health service in England faces potential breakdown. The aim is to divert available resources to cope with emergency admissions. As a result, waiting lists for elective treatment that have risen substantially will lengthen still further.
Although no new funding is envisaged beyond what has already been announced, steps are being taken to ease the financial straitjacket on trusts. The health minister, Alan Milburn, intends to bring forward to October, from February, the allocations to health authorities of the £1.2bn ($1.9bn) extra funding for 1998-9. Although the new money will not be freed until next April, the intention is to allow authorities to plan over an 18 month period.
In addition, NHS trusts that are in serious financial difficulty are being allowed to carry their deficits forward for three years instead of achieving a balance annually. In exceptional cases this can be extended to five years.
Plans are being made to speed up the discharge from hospital of elderly patients whose treatment is finished but who await a social assessment of their longterm care. Closer cooperation between hospitals and local social service departments has been welcomed by the BMA but has raised alarm in other quarters about inappropriate discharge of elderly patients due to inadequate funding. The health secretary, Frank Dobson, said he will “knock heads together” if necessary.
The political dimension is of a looming winter crisis comparable to that of 1987–which precipitated the NHS internal market reforms—and which now threatens to destabilise the government's election pledges to “save the NHS” and “take 100000 people off waiting lists.” Mr Milburn blamed the “appalling legacy of the previous Tory administration” for a dramatic rise in hospital waiting lists.
The latest waiting list figures show that the total number of patients waiting to be admitted to NHS hospitals in England has risen by 136000–an increase of 12.9%–in the year to the end of June. This is said to be the biggest yearly rise in the history of the NHS. The total waiting list is now 1192700. The quarterly rise was 3%.
The time that patients have to wait is also longer. The number of patients waiting over one year rose steeply, by 47%, to 44300 in the past year. At the end of June 388 patients had been waiting longer than the 18 months stipulated by the patient's charter, the number having more than doubled in three months.
Mr Milburn said that waiting lists will go on rising for some time to come, but he said the 18 month waiting limit would be adhered to.
A shortage of beds is predicted this winter
KATIE BRIMACOMBE/NETWORK
