NHS waiting lists in Bury rocket - with 1,200 waiting more than a year for treatment
23.03.2022 - 15:57
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Hospital waiting lists for treatment in Bury continue to rocket with 79 per cent more patients experiencing delays than since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Under the NHS Constitution, no patient should wait longer than a year to start treatment but in January there were 1,248 Bury patients with such waits. Of these, 120 people had waited more than two years to be seen – as Bury health chiefs expressed fears that it could take up to eight years to clear the backlog in treatment.
When a patient is referred to a consultant-led team of a secondary care provider, they are added to a planned care waiting list with the entry referred to as an ‘incomplete pathway’. The pathway will generally be ended either once the patient receives the awaited treatment or it is confirmed that treatment is not required. In April 2020, essentially the start of the pandemic, there were 14,297 incomplete pathways for Bury patients against a target of no more than 15,800.
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The target has been revised twice since that time. Firstly, in April 2021 the target was for the waiting list size to stabilise at the March 2021 position (18,853 pathways) and then at the September 2021 position (23,993 pathways).
But by the time of the latest published figure in December 2021 the waiting list for Bury patients had increased to 25,542. This is 6.5 per cent above the current target and reflects an increase of 79 per cent when compared to April 2020.
The figures were published in a report to Bury Council’s health scrutiny committee, authored by Will Blandamer, executive director of strategic commissioning for the borough. Last month, NHS England