The NHS backlog is causing huge problems for patients up and down the country.
The problem existed before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but the effects of it has caused further delays to appointments and operations.
This includes people suffering with cancer and Boris Johnson's Tory government has attempted to tackle the backlog, but their plans have been criticised by Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
The Labour MP said of Sajid Javid's plans : "[It] falls seriously short of the scale of the challenge facing the NHS and the misery that is affecting millions of people."
When there are problems with the NHS, it has the potential to affect everyone as it is the frontline of the UK's defence against health problems.
It is therefore vitally important that the current problems are sorted, but what is a backlog and why is it a problem?
What is the NHS backlog?
The NHS backlog is the number of people still waiting for the treatments and operations they need.
There are currently around 6 million people on waiting lists for things like joint replacements, tests and routine surgeries. 5.7 million people were on waiting lists at the end of August.
Before Covid hit, around 1,600 people had been on a waiting list for over a year. This figure is now around 300,000.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid has now laid out his plans to tackle the problem and pledged the overall waiting list will start falling by March 2024 and waits for a year or more should be over by March 2025.
Under the NHS Elective Recovery Plan, two-year waits are also being targeted and the government hopes to end them by July 2022.
Other parts of the plan include:
- Aims to eliminate waits of over 18 months by April 2023
- New online platform for families to help with providing information called 'My Planned Care'. This will also allow people to see where they are on a waiting list
- Aims to eliminate waits of 65 weeks by March 2024
- Restoration of diagnostics within six weeks by 2025
- Increase capacity through a reservist list of health workers
In response, Labour said the plan "falls seriously short".
Streeting said: "There's no plan to tackle the workforce crisis, no plan to deal with delayed discharges and no hope of eliminating waits of more than a year before the general election in 2024."
What has caused the NHS backlog?
There is a backlog because the NHS currently does not have the capacity to deal with the number of patients needing treatment.
It is difficult for the government to blame the backlog solely on the pandemic, as waiting lists were already at 4.43 million before Covid broke out.
Labour's criticism centred around Javid's new plans not doing enough to tackle staff shortages and delayed discharges, both of these problems make it harder to get people off waiting lists.
The British Medical Association said: "With demand for hospital treatment outstripping capacity even before Covid-19, it is no surprise that the demands of delivering care during a pandemic have led to significant backlogs and longer waits for patients.
"The ongoing need for stringent infection prevention control measures and workforce shortages mean it will take even longer to work through as demand continues to rise."
Bed capacity is also a problem and emergency consultant and former president for Society for Acute Medicine, Dr Susan Crossland, told the i : "Elective care will never function well if other parts of the service are under significant strain and we are far from finding solutions to the workforce crisis, reductions in bed capacity and delayed discharges which remain a fundamental threat to recovery."
Why can't I get an appointment?
The pandemic has piled huge pressure on GPs and is impacting people's appointments.
A survey by GP Online said that GPs are delivering 84% more patient contacts per day on average than the level considered safe by the BMA.
A Surrey GP told the website: "I must do about 200 to 300 tasks a day, of which about 90 are proper consultations, but that's just normal now. It's a bit busier on Mondays, but every day is the same, everyone is just flat out and full on - there is no stopping."
As reported in the Daily Mail, figures from the Care Quality Commission showed 8,267 patients contacted them between January and November 2021
This is almost three times the 3,001 reported in the same period the year before and they said the "vast majority" were people unable to book appointments.
