As long waiting lists for the NHS continue to persist, and people receiving diagnoses in adequate time has not reached its target, Sunak ventured on a campaign trail yesterday to trumpet new measures aimed at promoting timely diagnostics. This was to help ensure he can meet one of his top five priorities: cutting NHS waiting lists.
Sunak aimed to talk up the rollout of community diagnostic centres to 160 sites across England, in a bid to speed up diagnoses and reduce the pressure on overloaded hospitals.
While the Tories claim that we have seen the ‘‘biggest five-month fall in the waiting list in over ten years…outside the pandemic,’’ with the numbers down around 200,000, the figures remain higher than when Sunak took office and made the pledge to cut waiting lists. With opposition MPs such as Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, claiming, “I think by now hopefully people have reached a conclusion that the longer the Conservatives are in power, the longer patients will wait,” the NHS has become the key battleground for the upcoming general election.
Earlier in April, Curia’s Health Care and Life Sciences Research Group was joined by Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director for Cancer at NHS England, for a Chatham House meeting on the future of cancer services. This article will detail the place of Cancer in the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS Long Term Plan » Cancer.
What are the Diagnostics Plans?
In Sunak’s visit, alongside Conservative MP for Woking, Jonathan Lord, to Woking Community Hospital, he stated that there would be a multi-million-pound investment into a Community Diagnostic Centre in Woking.
With Sunak recognising that ‘‘none of this is acceptable, and I am doing absolutely everything I can to bring the waiting list down,’’ he has set targets to include:
- 75% of cancer patients being diagnosed or having cancer ruled out within 28 days.
- No patients being on waiting lists for longer than 65 weeks.
- 76% of patients waiting less than four hours in AE
Continuing problems:
The routine procedures backlog hit 7.54 million at the end of February, according to NHS England, down from 7.58 million the month before. But almost the entire 40,000 drop was down to one group of procedures being culled from the figures.
Whilst the Tories claim that strike action has hindered any progress in diagnostic targets and drop in the number of people on waiting lists, the Health Foundation’s analysis last year found that strikes have only directly resulted in a small increase in the overall waiting list.
The NHS Confederation boss, Matthew Taylor, told the World at One the health service needs more funding and more focus on preventative health — meaning reform (promises of which rarely deliver) won’t be enough.
Furthermore, former Health Minister, James Bell stated that “statistics on basic healthiness are really poor in this country. We’re the second worst in the G7,” he told Times Radio. “We need to address the fundamental reasons why so many millions of people in Britain are carrying so much disease.”
Curia meets with Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director for Cancer at NHS England
Curia’s Health Care and Life Sciences Research Group was joined by Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director for Cancer at NHS England, for a Chatham House meeting on the future of cancer services. Chaired by Lord James O’Shaughnessy, the meeting formed part of the Research Group’s ongoing Oncology Programme.
With the full report being available to Research Group Subscribers (more on that below), the place of Cancer in the NHS Long Term Plan is a theme that was central to discussing future developments in cancer treatment. With the NHS’ own focus shifting from the delivery of specialist cancer services to one of early diagnosis, the government’s announcement will come as welcome news to support the NHS Long Term Plan.
Within the meeting, attendees also discussed the ongoing work (in both the private and public sector) that aligns with this long-term plan, looking at the potential of data to maximise the benefits of early diagnosis.
Helping Staff with Diagnostics
Ensuring that staff time is better used also became a topic of discussion, with the backdrop of increasingly pessimistic outlooks on the state of the NHS and overstretched NHS Staff. In early March of this year, England’s NHS Ombudsman warned Ombudsman warns over-stretched doctors could put cancer patients at risk | Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) that staffing issues (over-stretching, exhaustion, communication issues and more) would need rectification, and referred to the 2023 Workforce plan, supported cross-party. As said by Rob Behrens, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman:
“A key part of [prioritising the safety of patients] is investing in the workforce, for today and for the long-term, including providing full funding for the long-term workforce plan.”
However, with seemingly low levels of appetite within major parties to embark on funding frenzies, the solution to supporting the workforce might need to come from elsewhere. Innovation and new technologies to support early diagnostics would firstly reduce the number of people needing NHS support in the first place, but as a knock-on effect, this would lead to lower workloads for staff.
Health, Care and Life Sciences Research Group
As the Health, Care and Life Sciences Research Group continues in its Oncology Programme, with a roundtable on Utilising Data to Advance Cancer Pathways next week, subscribers to the Research Group will gain privileged access to the Programme its outputs.
Furthermore Subscribers will have the chance to join us at events including our recently planned ‘in discussion with’ afternoon with Richard Meddings, Chair of NHS England, and Lord James O’Shaughnessy. This event will be reserved for Research Group Subscribers as well as senior health professionals in the public sector and Parliamentarians.
Find out more about the rest of Chamber’s other events here.
Click here to see the annual performance figures which were published on how the NHS is holding up.