The hospital waiting list in England has risen for the third month in a row with experts warning the government’s key NHS priority – tackling the backlog – is at risk.<\/p>\n
At the end of August the waiting list for routine treatments hit 7.41 million \u2013 in May it was 7.36 million.<\/p>\n
The proportion waiting longer than the target time of 18 weeks has also risen.<\/p>\n
Experts said the government was facing a significant challenge reducing waits, but ministers said its investment in the NHS would pay off.<\/p>\n
The government has promised that by the end of this parliament it will hit the 18-week waiting time target \u2013 something that has not been done for a decade.<\/p>\n
That requires 92% of patients, waiting for treatments such as knee and hip operations, to be seen within 18 weeks. Currently, 61% are.<\/p>\n
Over the summer waits worsened following a period of sustained progress after Labour came to power.<\/p>\n
Dr Francesca Cavallaro, of the Health Foundation think-tank, said on current trends the government would fall short on its pledge.<\/p>\n
“The scale of the challenge remains significant.”<\/p>\n
Prof Peter Friend, of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, predicted the coming winter would be tough.<\/p>\n
“The government must face facts: without urgent investment in NHS infrastructure and support for staff wellbeing, progress on reducing waiting times will remain slow.<\/p>\n
“Surgeons are ready to do more but are held back by critical resource issues – a lack of operating time, staff vacancies and equipment. Patients deserve better.”<\/p>\n
Rory Deighton, of the NHS Confederation, which represents health bosses, said: “NHS leaders and their teams are working incredibly hard to boost productivity. So it is deeply frustrating that waiting lists have gone up for the third month in a row.<\/p>\n
But Health Minister Stephen Kinnock defended the performance of the NHS.<\/p>\n
He said it had been a “record-breaking” summer with more tests and checks being done than ever before.<\/p>\n
“We know there’s more to do – that’s why we’re pressing ahead with new surgical hubs, evening and weekend scans, and cutting-edge technology to get millions more patients treated on time,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hospital waiting list in England has risen for the third month in a row with experts warning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-200394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}