Huge waiting list at Queen's Hospital Burton as a result of Covid pandemic

It could take two years for our hospitals to work through an enormous waiting list which has formed due to the pandemic, with thousands of patients waiting more than a year for treatment.

Before the pandemic, our hospitals either had fewer than five patients waiting more than a year for treatment or operations, or zero patients were waiting this long.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which has involved restrictions putting a stop to almost all operations and treatment, has caused the number of patients waiting more than a year to skyrocket.

During the first wave this meant all but urgent and cancer treatments were paused. Elective (non urgent) surgeries were also paused throughout the second peak of the second wave.

The University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust, which oversees the Royal Derby Hospital and Queen's Hospital in Burton, now has a staggering 6,629 patients waiting more than a year for treatment, as of the end of January.

This figure is still increasing.

It has made an aim to cut this in half by April next year and says it could take two years to reduce this back to the usual zero.

However, this depends on how many services can reopen back towards normal capacity and for how long, with any potential future delays posing a risk to this target.

A need to give hospital staff time to recover, at least partially, following the easing of the pandemic, is vital, says the trust, before it can forge full-steam ahead with urgent recovery plans to quash the waiting list.

In November, local health chiefs suspected it may take six months for waiting lists to "stabilise" over which time they would aim to "slow the growth".

Gavin Boyle, chief executive of the hospital trust, wrote in a board report to be discussed tomorrow: "The prolonged second wave has reduced our ability to maintain planned surgical activity and the number of patients waiting longer than 52 weeks has increased significantly. We have begun to develop plans to restore our services.

"However, our staff are tired after a year of the Covid-19 pandemic and with schools only just reopening, with Easter to come, we need to be honest with our communities that it will take time to restore services to their former level.

"It is still important to stress that all patients waiting have been clinically assessed and are being treated in priority order.

"The backlog of long waiting will take more than a year, potentially two years, to clear. We are going to take the opportunity to find new and better ways of delivering our services.

"A challenge of this order will only be met by working with our system partners.

"We will need to plan our recovery in a way which allows our front-line clinical teams to recover too.

"The process of recovery needs to be respectful of the experiences that our people have faced over the last 12 months, our approach needs to be patient-focused, treating the most clinically urgent first."

Dr Kathy McLean, trust board chair, wrote: " I want to reassure the communities we provide care for that we are always thinking of those who are waiting for treatment.

"We understand this is a time of great anxiety and that, having seen the success of the vaccine programme so far, individuals waiting will want to know when they will get their treatment.

"We are committed to doing our very best to ensure we communicate this and over the next few months we will be increasing services in a planned way.

"But we need to be open about the challenge facing us given there are so many who have waited patiently."

Derbyshire health and care organisations agreed at a meeting in early February to focus on protecting theatre (operations) and bed capacity to ensure orthopaedic surgery is maintained throughout "periods of operational challenge".

This is the area of health which is home to the most patients waiting more than a year (2,626) for treatment and includes hip and knee surgeries.

The second key area is ophthalmology (1,377 patients), which is the treatment of eye conditions including cataracts operations. Post operation check-ups and other similar services may be shifted to community facilities.

Last month, figures showed that as of the end of December, around one in three Derbyshire patients are now waiting in excess of four months of treatment or operations.

The average waiting time had grown from around two months to roughly three months, while the reasonable worst case scenario had risen from around six months to a year.