Sutton and Mansfield hospital bosses 'sorry' for delays patients face for treatment

Your Chad reported how NHS England figures show 37,834 patients were waiting for non-urgent consultant-led care at Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Trust – which runs Mansfield Community, Sutton’s King’s Mill and Newark hospitals – at the end of August, 1 per cent more than 37,304 the month before.

The figure was also an increase of 16 per cent on the 32,610 on the waiting list in August last year.

Now trust bosses have apologised for the delays.

A trust spokeswoman said: “While we have continued to treat patients throughout the pandemic, understandably some patients have been waiting longer than we would normally like for treatment, and we’re sorry for this.

“We understand how worrying it can be for patients and their loved ones whilst they’re waiting for appointments, investigations or treatment.

“We want to ensure that we’re seeing patients as quickly as possible so that they can be given advice or start a plan of treatment and thanks to the additions of a mobile endoscopy and CT scanner we are able to test or scan an additional 800 patients every month.”

The trust says about 9,600 patients a year will benefit from earlier diagnosis of serious illnesses with the launch of the units.

It hopes the new units – separate from the main trust building – will see 200 patients waiting for urgent and routine endoscopy investigations each month, alongside 600 who are waiting for CT scans on internal organs, such as the brain, blood vessels or bones.

Crisis

Across England, the number of people waiting for treatment rose by 109,000 from 5.6 million in July to 5.7m in August – the highest since records began in 2007.

The King’s Fund think tank has warned the waiting list for planned care in England is continuing to climb towards levels not seen since the waiting times crisis of the 1990s.

Siva Anandaciva, fund chief analyst, said the Government’s upcoming Spending Review must address staffing challenges within the service, or ‘risk undermining efforts to reduce the waiting list backlog’.

NHS England said the health service carried out 1.1m elective procedures in August despite admitting 23,000 Covid patients, while major A&Es treated more than 1.4 million people during September.

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