Death by Waiting: Great Britain's Fight against the NHS Waiting List

 If you have ever been in any hospital’s waiting room, you’ll know it is rarely a pleasant experience. You have a billion things on your mind right from what the diagnosis might be to how long testing and treatment will take. In such a scenario, imagine finding out that you’ll have to wait for a few months, if not years, to even get through the first door!

This dystopian scenario has become the reality for Great Britain. Recent headlines have highlighted the increasing delays in elective care, the rise in average waiting time at the Accidents and Emergencies (A&E) department, longer ambulance response times, and even impediments in cancer care. Moreover, reports published in leading newspapers like The Guardian and Daily Mail show a 7.2 million-strong waiting list for NHS scans and treatment! 

The National Health System, or the NHS, is a comprehensive public-health service under government administration. The NHS Constitution states a right for patients to start treatment under consultants within 18 weeks of receiving a General Practitioner, or GP’s, referral. However, Chair of Royal College of General Practitioners Professor Kamila Hawthorne recently told The Guardian in an interview, “The waiting list [for a test] might be 8-12 months... The risk that is being carried is so much greater because of the wait time.” Speaking of its impact on healthcare receivers, she said, “Patients getting sicker while they are on the waiting list is something GPs see and worry about, because the risk to the patient is so much greater. It’s inevitable that some people stuck will get sicker, because that’s the nature of illness.” 

There are many reasons behind this plight, including the following:

1. Lack of adequate general practice appointments.
2. Delays in discharging patients or handing them over to the right department indicate system-wide problems related to hospital capacity, social care and community services, as well as increased demand for care.
3. Rise in caregiving workload for general practitioners due to interventions such as Advice and Guidance.
4. Reduced capacity of hospitals to accept referrals. 

Professor Hawthorne underlined the need for an appointment tracking system to help patients navigate “the jungle of the NHS” better. However, simply placating their worries is not enough. Arguably, this isn’t the time for introducing another version of the universal healthcare system either. These healthcare systems draw funding from taxpayers’ money, and increasing taxes in the middle of the Cost of Living Crisis is not a feasible option. Instead, here are a few solutions that Institute of Public Policy Research has proposed:

1. Offering elective treatment on weekends along with ‘surge’ pay for these additional shifts. 
2. Creating regional waiting lists to offer faster treatment to those patients who can travel to farther locations.
3. Switching to a patient-led approach for follow-up appointments to cut back on unnecessary routine check-ups. 
4. Investing in social care workforce to free up hospital beds and reduce wait time.

These interventions, paired with strides the NHS is making to tackle the waiting list, will surely restore patient satisfaction in no time.