The new Health and Social Care
Secretary, , recently
warned that the number of people on a waiting list for NHS care
in England could reach as many as 13 million.
New IFS modelling shows the
scale of the waiting list challenge ahead, as the millions who have missed out on
care come forward and the NHS is potentially hamstrung by
infection control measures and the continued need to treat a high
number of COVID-19 patients.
The analysis shows that whether or not
waiting lists rise as far as 13 million depends crucially on the
ability of the NHS to expand its capacity and treat more patients
than it did pre-pandemic. If that proves impossible,
waiting lists could indeed rise to 13 million – or even
higher.
These are among the findings of new research
from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, funded by the Nuffield
Foundation.
NHS waiting lists have grown by less than a million since the
start of the pandemic despite there being 3 million fewer planned
admissions and 17 million fewer outpatient appointments in the
first 10 months of the pandemic alone. This is because 7 million
fewer people joined the waiting list between March 2020 and May
2021 than would otherwise have been expected. What
happens to waiting lists in the short term will therefore depend
crucially on what fraction of these 7 million ‘missing’ patients
come back for treatment.
In the longer term, NHS capacity to deal with
non-COVID patients will be crucial. Even if only
two-thirds of the missing patients return then with capacity at
95% of pre-pandemic levels – much more than the NHS is currently
managing – waiting lists could easily exceed 13 million (and keep
growing). Expanding capacity will be the only solution
to cutting waiting lists in the future.
Finding ways to boost NHS capacity will
therefore be a major and pressing challenge for the new Secretary
of State and NHS Chief Executive, and will undoubtedly feed into
discussions around NHS funding at this autumn’s Spending
Review.
Max Warner, a Research Economist at IFS and an author of
the analysis, said:
‘More than 4 million people were on an NHS waiting list even
before the pandemic. COVID-19 has only made matters worse, as
millions of people have missed out on treatment and millions more
haven’t even been referred onto the waiting list to begin with.
There is a real risk that if the NHS cannot find effective ways
to boost its capacity – a challenge at the best of times, let
alone after a major pandemic – then much longer waiting lists
will be with us for years to come.’
