Top medics at the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust have explained they feared Omicron could lead to one in four elective operations being cancelled - but that work to mitigate this throughout January meant only "around 10%" were affected in the end.
Meanwhile, the Trust's chief exec Sir James Mackey warned that it remained "under pressure" from Covid-19, with staff absences rising again, mirroring an increase in cases in the community. Sir James, who is also the Government's adviser in charge of the national recovery of elective surgery waiting lists after the pandemic, said he hoped the issue would subside in "the next two or three weeks".
The doctors in charge of surgery and A&E at the NHS Trust - which runs the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital (NSECH) in Cramlington along with smaller hospital across Northumberland and North Tyneside - told a board meeting on Thursday about how they had coped with a difficult winter.
Read more: Covid rates still rising all over the North East - though picture varies across our region
As the original variant of Omicron swept through the country over December and January there was widespread concern about what this would mean for people who were waiting for important operations. Senior figures Dr Elliot Sykes and Dr Simon Eaton delivered a presentation explaining how intensive care and A&E at the Trust had coped over the winter.
Speaking directly about how Omicron had hit elective care, Dr Sykes said: "We predicted that the impact would be around 25%. But with a lot of work, we moved a lot of things around." The Trust decided to use a ward at Hexham General to increase "surge capacity" during the Omicron wave, and Dr Sykes explained this had help the trust to "mitigate" the impact of the huge spike in Covid on people who had planned operations.
He added: "Overall, on the grounds that we do about 1800 cases a month, we were able to mitigate that predicted impact of 25% down to about 10% for that period of time." As of the most recently-published national NHS data for January, there were 28,543 people waiting for elective procedures at the Trust.
Dr Eaton also sounded a cautionary note, pointing out that the Government's strategy of "Living With Covid" meant the Trust had been forced to juggle A&E winter pressures with high-levels of Covid patients in a way which was different to previously in the pandemic.
He said: "Previously when we've had significant levels of Covid inpatients, that's coincided with times of reduced attendances because we've been in lockdowns. But what we're trying to do at the moment, apparently, is live normally with Covid. So we have got this overlap between the pressure of winter and high attendances, but actually also significant numbers of people with Covid in hospital."
At the moment there are - as of March 19 - 102 Covid positive patients in hospital.
Dr Eaton added that staff absence and tiredness was also causing concern. "We've obviously had some very consistent and prolonged problems with staff absences, which gets very tiring for everyone involved," he said. "That isn't slowing and at the moment that's getting worse again rather than anything else. It's also hits our colleagues in the community and social care and community services."
Also speaking at the board meeting, the chair Prof Alan Richardson spoke of the ongoing pressures facing the Trust. "We are under pressure. Covid is still here," he said. "It's having quite a different impact on us now - and it's really quite a difficult time for us. Staff are tired but they are absolutely committed. They're smiling and positive but you can see in their eyes they're tired. There are also lots of significant things going on around us - energy costs, inflation, Ukraine - all of that is around us but we are driving on with a lot of care and a lot of thought."
Sir James added that while the Trust continued to "perform strongly compared to the rest of the NHS", the increasing prevalence of Covid-19 still had a serious impact on services.
"The last couple of weeks have been incredibly difficult again." he said. There's been increasing Covid prevalence, albeit lower impact disease, it's a milder version of disease and we have a largely vaccinated population. But largely there's been an impact on absence and disruption.
"I think we can expect another two or three weeks of that being quite difficult."
Sir James said though the Trust would not now meet it's own objective to eliminate people waiting over a year for treatment by the end of March - there are around 41 people at the moment in that situation - he expected this to happen well ahead of the national NHS target.
