Shattered promises: NHS missed targets to tackle care backlogs

The Health Secretary has admitted the government’s pledge to help reduce the NHS’s record-breaking care backlog has been broken as some patients had to wait 18 months for an operation.

Carefully woven into a statement that Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, delivered on Tuesday about an unrelated area of NHS policy – the new plan to improve access to GP care – he let slip that NHS targets have once again been missed.

Claiming that all patients who had been waiting well over a year to receive an operation in hospital would be treated in April, it has been considered that an estimated 10,000 people who had been waiting for at least 78 weeks were still on the waiting list at the end of April this year.

By the end of March this year, just over 10,700 were waiting more than 18 months, but NHS England said around 4,000 of them were complex cases or patients who had been offered treatment but had chosen to wait.

Additionally, the targets were aimed to eliminate over year long waits for planned care and to reduce 62-day cancer waits to pre-pandemic levels.

The news has been thought of as a failure for Rishi Sunak, who, at the beginning of the year, made ‘cut waiting lists’ one of his five pledges and insisted that the promise would be honoured.

Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, said: ‘I promised I would cut NHS waiting lists and we are delivering.

‘Reducing 18-month waits by over 90% is huge progress, and it is a testament to the hard work of the NHS staff who have achieved this despite one of the busiest winters on record.’

However, Barclays admission was the second broken promise on improving NHS care made by a health minister in the space of a few hours. On the same day, Neil O’Brien, a Junior Health Minister, stated that the aim to hire 6,000 more GPs by 2024 would also be missed.

Despite this, NHS England Chief Executive, Amanda Pritchard, said ‘great strides’ were being made in the face of ‘incredible pressure’. As well as dealing with an increase of flu patients last winter, the NHS have also had to contend with managing the impact of strikes that have included a vast amount of health workers. Altogether they have caused the postponement of more than 500,000 appointments and operations.

Ms Pritchard said: ‘There is still much work to be done, but these are remarkable achievements given all the NHS has had to contend with.’

Image: JAFAR AHMED