Your vote, your choice, General Election: NHS waiting lists
- Author, Sharon Barbour
- Role, Health Correspondent, BBC Look North
In the run-up to the general election, the BBC is looking at the issues that matter most to you as part of Your Voice, Your Vote. One topic was waiting lists for NHS treatment. Sharon Barbour, BBC Look North’s health correspondent, took to the streets of Newcastle to hear people’s experiences.
Jabar Barzanji is “desperate” to undergo eye surgery.
“Initially, I had a few operations that took place within a few months,” he says, “but I waited three years for the last one.”
The 23-year-old from Newcastle lost his left eye as a teenager in a car accident in which his parents died.
He was seriously injured and is wearing a bandage while he waits for an implant.
“I don’t know what caused this long wait,” he says.
“It doesn’t take a day or two, months, a year or two. Especially for someone like me at such a young age, it’s just difficult.”
Jabar says people make assumptions because he wears an eye patch.
“I wear an artificial eye, but it causes pain because the implant doesn’t fit and it can cause inflammation, so I wear a patch,” he explains.
He says the situation has also had a negative impact on his mental health.
Jabar, who works full-time and plans to attend college, says he hopes his surgery can take place in the next few months.
In the past, he had considered getting treatment abroad, but it was too expensive.
He says he wants the next government to speed up appointments.
Jabar is not alone. With so many people waiting for treatment, I took the opportunity to go out on the streets of Newcastle city centre to see what people’s experiences were – and they wanted to talk about it.
Within minutes, I was hearing stories of patients who had “waited a year for an appointment with the hospital dentist.” Others reported long wait times for operations. One man said he waited four years for a hernia operation. Cancer patients were treated more quickly.
Some spoke of taking desperate measures to seek treatment, going abroad for fear that something might go wrong or seeking private treatment.
Across England, 7.57 million people were on the waiting list for treatment at the end of April, compared to 7.54 million the previous month.
This will be one of the biggest challenges for the next government.
Siva Anandaciva of the health think tank King’s Fund says the figures show the NHS is under “incredible pressure”.
“We are facing performance challenges that would have been unthinkable ten years ago,” he explains.
“It is no surprise that ahead of the general election, the NHS is once again at the top of many polls on the issues most important to voters.”
The medical director of the English National Health Service (NHS), Professor Sir Stephen Powis, says that overall demand remains high.
He warns that the five-day strike by junior doctors at the end of June is likely to cause “further disruption”.
There are differences in waiting times.
The North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board states: “We are currently the best performing ICB region in the country for people receiving treatment within 18 weeks of referral.”
It is said that significant progress has been made in eliminating the backlog.
Across the North East and Cumbria, 355,660 people have been on the waiting list since March.
However, wait times vary depending on what you are waiting for.
Patients requiring cardiac treatment are treated more quickly – in cardiology it takes about nine weeks – compared to an average wait time of 14 weeks in plastic surgery, trauma and orthopedics.
Ann Hope from Billingham was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia.
The 44-year-old has completed her cancer treatment, but is suffering from pain in her legs due to chemotherapy. She has been waiting for treatment since January.
“It’s like a constant tingling sensation,” she says.
She says she is sensitive to many of the medications doctors have tried to treat her with.
In January she was offered a new treatment. The only problem was that she had to wait – and that’s how she’s been doing ever since.
Ann was told she would have to wait until September for pain relief.
Because of the pain, she finds it difficult to do even the simplest things.
“I used to be able to run 10 kilometers, now sometimes I can’t even walk up the stairs,” she says.
“Many people look at me and don’t see the pain because I try to hide it – especially from the children.”
She says the waitlist will be the main factor in her decision at the ballot box.
“The NHS is definitely the top priority for the person I vote for.
“The wait times, especially for things like this, are unbelievable and things have to be sorted out very quickly.”
How do the parties deal with waiting lists?
Work promises to carry out an additional 40,000 operations, scans and examinations per week in England and to double the number of cancer scanners.
The conservative say they will recruit 92,000 extra nurses and 24,000 extra doctors and invest in new NHS facilities.
The Liberal Democrats would ensure that all cancer patients would begin treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral – employ more cancer nurses and replace old scanners.
The Green Party wants to increase funding for the NHS to £50 billion by 2030 and announces a pay rise for service staff.
Reform Great Britain has called for a new funding model for the NHS, taking its cue from countries such as France which have insurance-based healthcare models. The party proposes an extra £17 billion a year for the NHS.
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