More than 11 million patients in need of follow-up hospital care are on “hidden” NHS waiting lists, a report has found.
The findings come after official data showed that waiting lists hit a record high of 7.75 million people in England waiting for their first treatment following referral to a specialist.
Researchers at Reform, a public services think tank, found that the “hidden” waiting list for follow-up appointments had increased by 50 per cent since 2019, to 11.3 million people, taking the total NHS waiting list to 18.8 million people.
The analysis is based on freedom of information requests to all 119 acute trusts. Just over half provided data, which was extrapolated to provide estimates for England.
Follow-up appointments are considered essential to providing effective and safe healthcare, with failure to carry out adequate monitoring of long-term conditions or cancer patients, manage medicines and check patients after surgery posing significant risks.
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The think tank is calling on NHS England to mandate trusts to publish follow-up waiting list data on a monthly basis, amid fears that trusts are failing to prioritise patients with the highest risks.
Sebastian Rees, the report’s co-author, said: “The health and safety of patients is being threatened by these hidden waitlists. The failure to provide timely follow-up appointments risks failing to detect the recurrence of cancer or complications post-surgery, and people becoming disabled as the result of a deteriorating condition. It is deeply concerning that so many trusts could not even tell us how many people are on their follow-up waitlists.”
Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, described the findings as alarming. “We worry that long waits could lead to patients’ health declining, perhaps to the point where treatment is ineffective. We urge the NHS to be transparent about the number of patients waiting for care,” she told the Daily Mail.
The NHS told the newspaper: ‘These are routine follow-up appointments after treatment, and in many cases patients may be booked for multiple appointments. So it is simply wrong to count these appointments as patients.”