As NHS staff scrambled to deal with the Omicron wave of Covid while bringing down huge waiting lists, Newcastle's hospitals were the busiest in the country in January according to NHS data.
The Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust - which manages the the Freeman and the RVI in addition to a number of community sites - admitted 4,183 patients for elective treatments over the month. That was 4% more than anywhere else in England. The next busiest was the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust - which saw 3,966 patients.
In Newcastle, the hospital speciality to see the most patients was ophthalmology - with 832 patients seen. That service has been under extreme pressure since Covid-19 hit, and of those people 362 had been waiting more than a year of their treatment. Other areas to see significant numbers of patients included the Trust's trauma and orthopaedics department (412 patients) and "other surgical services" (523).
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The figures show that the median waiting time for patients was around two and a half months (10.6 weeks), but as has been widely-reported, some patients have waited more than a year - or even more than two. As of the most recent data, there are over 90,000 people on waiting lists in Newcastle in total.
Dame Jackie Daniel, the Trust's chief exec, wrote last week: "There is no doubt that services across the trust are responding to our patients needs and in published NHS figures for January, we had 4% more elective admission treatments than the next busiest trust in the country – and 40% more than some other major hospitals were able to deliver – which is an exceptional achievement. This is just one example of the efforts everyone is making."
As part of plans to tackle elective waiting lists, work is underway to build a new day-case treatment centre at the Freeman Hospital, while the Newcastle Westgate Cataract Centre opened on the old Newcastle General site last year as part of efforts to tackle ophthalmology waiting times.
Dame Jackie added: "The circumstances that have converged to create our pressures are not something that we have control over, but we are responding to them positively.
"We are making investments in the workforce and in things that matter to us – better facilities, more flexible working, investment in our estate to improve the working environment, and investment in staff teams (without impacting on existing services) with a recruitment drive about to get underway for the day treatment centre at the Freeman Hospital which opens later this year.
"I am confident that by working together as a team – and by remaining positive – we will continue to make a difference."
The national NHS "Elective Recovery Plan" sets out a number of targets as part of a drive to reduce NHS backlogs around the country. This includes "eliminating waits of longer than a year for elective care by March 2025", ensuring that 75% of cancer diagnoses take place with 28 days, and delivering "around 30% more elective activity" by 2025 - compared to before the pandemic.
Progress towards these targets will be tied into future funding for trusts. At a Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust board meeting last week, Dr Vicky McFarlane Reid added: "More activity is absolutely crucial to us, and it's also the gateway to securement more investment and funding." The board meeting heard that in some areas activity was already at or above pre-pandemic levels, but in others this was not the case - leading to a mixed picture.
The region's other NHS hospitals were also busy throughout the winter though have smaller footprints, and generally take on fewer patients. At the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust 2,496 elective patients were seen, Gateshead Health saw 375, County Durham and Darlington had 1,400 and Northumbria Healthcare had 1,530.
