Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
Blue Sky Offices Shoreham, 25 Cecil Pashley Way, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, BN43 5FF, UNITED KINGDOM
Tel: +44 (0)1273 434 943
Email: [email protected]
Around 121,000 patients died last year while on NHS waiting lists, according to a freedom of information request by the Labour Party.
The number of deaths has roughly doubled compared to the same period five years ago, and health bosses are now calling on the government to make a deal with striking doctors so they can focus on eradicating the backlog of care.
NHS left under-resourced and understaffed
The Labour party obtained data from 35 NHS trusts, roughly a quarter of the total number of trusts in England. The analysis of data revealed that 30,611 people died while on these trust’s waiting lists last year, suggesting there were around 120,695 deaths across the 138 trusts in England.
In 2017/18, a similar investigation found that 60,000 people died while waiting for NHS care, suggesting that the amount of people who have died as a result of long waits for care has doubled over the last five years.
Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said it is important to consider the impact Covid-19 would have had on this growing death toll. However, he says the key cause was a lack of NHS resources.
The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, told The Telegraph the numbers were an indication that people are “spending their final months in pain and agony.”
Streeting says Labour would “train the staff needed to treat patients on time again” and reform the health service to make it “fit for future”.
“A terrible indictment of this government’s mismanagement of our health services”
Dr Emma Runswick, BMA Council deputy chair, said despite the fact the figures are based on a small number of trusts, this growing number of deaths is a “terrible indictment of this Government’s mismanagement of our health services.”
Dr Runswick is now urging the government to put an end to strike action so that NHS staff can focus all their efforts on treating patients quickly and safely.
She said: “For too long, the Government has sat back and, despite promises to invest in the NHS and cut waiting lists, has done very little to make any serious improvements. In fact, waiting lists have grown year-on-year under recent successive Conservative governments. It’s no secret the NHS is in crisis – we are thousands of doctors short and the ones we have are overstretched, working all hours under tremendous pressure, with many on the verge of burnout. This all has an impact on patient care.
“The only way to cut waiting lists and improve care is to invest in services and the workforce and come back to the table to negotiate an agreed end to the doctors’ industrial dispute. Government must wake up to this reality and start valuing doctors instead of blaming them for the government’s own failures at every turn.”