A record 6.6 million people are waiting for hospital care in England, according to NHS data.
Separate figures obtained by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) also show more than 1.04 million people are waiting for community health services in England, including nearly 300,000 children. The total figure includes 75,000 children waiting for care from community paediatric services, 74,300 young people waiting for speech and language therapy, and more than 321,000 people waiting for musculoskeletal services such as physiotherapy.
Leading physiotherapists have called for more transparency over the data, with the NHS being urged to routinely publish non-hospital waiting lists and do more to fully restore services after the pandemic. Professor Karen Middleton, chief executive of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said: “These figures demonstrate what we’ve been warning about for some time – that the failure to fully reopen physiotherapy services is having an awful impact on patients.
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“If services do not have access to the space, equipment and staff they require, they cannot provide the level of rehabilitation patients need or shorten waiting times. The focus on waiting lists for surgery is understandable but those same lists could lengthen without urgent support for community services.”
Prof Middleton added greater transparency is needed from NHS England over community health service waiting times, as is provided in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. She said: “It’s essential that we know how many people need treatment and how long they are waiting if we are to deliver the quality of care that is needed.”
This comes as a government report published in July found the NHS is reported to be facing its “greatest workforce crisis in history” and will need almost one million extra jobs across health and social care by the early part of the next decade.
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