Daily Insight: Long waiters struck by strikes

National NHS forecasts predict there will still be around 11,000 patients on the elective waiting list who have been waiting longer than 78 weeks at the start of April, the target for clearing this cohort, as HSJ revealed yesterday.

Senior NHS figures familiar with the forecasts told HSJ they had stood at around 9,000 before last week, but mass cancellations during the three-day junior doctors’ strike had pushed up the potential outstanding cases by approximately 2,000.

This was at the lower end of scenarios considered by system leaders, with an uplift of 5,000 considered a plausible hit from the industrial action, albeit as a disaster scenario.

The March junior doctors’ strike was of course not the only challenge trusts have had to navigate during a chaotic winter.

There have been multiple strikes, a lingering coronavirus, the unwelcome return of flu, drama around the British Medical Association rate card and the pensions tax band break, although the last point was addressed in the Budget. 

This is why, while there is clearly room for significant improvement, NHS England has been keen to stress the positives.

However, with the BMA announcing plans for a 96-hour walkout just after Easter – timed after a four-day weekend to cause maximum chaos – it becomes even more imperative that a pay deal must be agreed ASAP.

A wave of rolling strikes as threatened by the BMA could see any green shoots in spring swiftly trampled on.

Respected duo’s Devon drop-in

Few areas have encountered as much national scrutiny as Devon in the last decade.

The integrated care system was one of three “success regimes” in the middle of that period, when its largest clinical commissioning group endured long-standing financial problems.

More recently, the ICS has found itself in the lowest category of NHS England’s new regulatory regime (known as the system oversight framework), which has led to a number of national visits and initiatives to tackle deep-rooted challenges.

These challenges include said financial issues, ambulance handover delays, and long waits for elective patients. All these problems could be attributed to every trust in the NHS, but the scale seems just that bit bigger for Devon.

As a result, two former – and seemingly well-respected – CEOs are among the latest figures NHSE has turned to in a bid to help the ICS.

Ex-Whittington Health Trust CEO Simon Pleydell played a brief role, which is now over, but Michael Wilson, the former Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust CEO who has been working on the ICS’s elective recovery plans since last summer, continues to work with the ICS on a part-time basis. Judging by the county’s waiting lists, he has a huge job on his hands.