England's hospital waiting list at 6.5M

As the latest figures show, NHS waiting lists have once again reached an all-time high, with 6.5 million people waiting for elective care treatments such as routine hip and knee replacements or cataract surgery. This compares to 3.95 million in April 2020, before the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. More worrying still, 323,093 patients have been waiting for treatment for more than a year, many of whom are living with painful and debilitating conditions that could be treated with relatively simple procedures.

Health officials have predicted that the number of people waiting for elective procedures in the UK may continue to rise until 2024, when numbers could reach over 10 million.

Thanks to the Elective Recovery Plan, funding is being made available - through an increase in NI contributions - to help tackle the backlog. However, the NHS continues to face other challenges, such as staff shortages and a renewed increase in COVID patients. Furthermore, renewed efforts to increase screening and resume normal service has led to an inevitable increase in waiting lists.

In order for the NHS to make serious headway in the battle to reduce waiting lists, then a strategic approach is needed, one which utilises public-private partnerships to provide the capacity that the NHS so badly needs.

At Medinet, we are working closely with our NHS partners to help tackle waiting times, one patient at a time. We provide fully-managed, tailored solutions to increase capacity across 20 specialities. Our experienced clinical care teams can be mobilised in under two weeks to provide elective services in specialties including ophthalmology, general surgery, urology, cardiology, rheumatology and more. We are helping NHS trusts to extend their services to 7-days a week, significantly increasing elective capacity and making meaningful reductions to waiting lists, fast.