Commenting on new NHS elective reform plans and upgrades to the NHS App, Tim Gardner, Assistant Director of Policy at the Health Foundation, said:
“We welcome the NHS’s plan to tackle waiting times for routine hospital treatment. With a waiting list of 7.5m and nearly 235,000 waits of over a year, there are too many patients waiting in pain, many with their conditions worsening over time.
“But we should be under no illusions about just how stretching the targets are in this plan. The aim for 92% of patients to receive hospital treatment within 18 weeks of a referral by the end of this parliament is highly ambitious and hasn’t been met for nearly a decade. To achieve this, it would effectively mean the waiting list would need to fall by over 3 million over the next four years. Meeting the pledge would require improvements of a comparable scale to those achieved by the last Labour government in the 2000s, but in more difficult circumstances and with far lower levels of funding increases.
“The commitment to an inclusive recovery to ensure that all patients benefit from the reforms is positive. The focus on personalisation and improving patient experience is welcome, but measures such as making greater use of the NHS App to expand patient choice and increasing use of the private sector*, need to be managed carefully so they don’t further widen inequalities.
“While cutting waiting times for routine hospital procedures is one of the government’s top priorities, it’s vital that this doesn’t come at the expense of the wider shifts the government wants to achieve through the upcoming 10 year health plan. Improvements need to be made across the wider health and care system, including significant investment in additional capacity in both primary and acute care, new technology and skills to streamline services and boost productivity, as well as reform and investment in social care.”
