NHS England claims victory on early ‘recovery’ target

In an official statement accompanying new performance data, NHS England said in September that the NHS carried out 80 per cent of the planned hospital inpatient procedures which it did last year. 

It said 96 per cent of last year’s level of CT scans were carried out, and 86 per cent of MRI.

NHSE has not yet published full performance data for September, so performance for other services, and for different regions, is not known.

At the end of July NHSE set recovery targets includingreaching ”at least 80 per cent of their last year’s activity for both overnight electives and for outpatient/day case procedures” in September, ”rising to 90 per cent in October”.

Systems were also expected to return ”at least 90 per cent of their last year’s levels of MRI/CT and endoscopy procedures, with an ambition to reach 100 per cent by October.” Many experts and senior figures in the system said at the time the targets were set that they would be extremely difficult to hit due to covid infection prevention and control measures.

There are now warnings the service may be ”hitting a wall” as it tries to grow activity even further, as suggested by the targets.

Figures for August — which have been published in full today — show activity levels growing less steeply than they did in July.

Admitted procedures increased to 155,789 in August (from 142,818 in July), compared to growth of nearly 50,000 from June to July.

Between July and August, there was very little growth in diagnostic activity, with only around 1,500 more tests performed month-on-month.

Six-week diagnostic waits decreased but, again, at a slower rate. There was a 17,500 decrease in six week waits in August compared to July, but in July the month-on-month decrease was 50,000. 

Nuffield Trust chief economist John Appleby said: “Despite an ambitious drive to get back to seeing close to the usual number of patients, today’s figures appear to show the NHS recovery hitting a wall.

“Outpatient visits and diagnostic tests fell slightly in August — something that may be partly seasonal, but certainly does not suggest a rapid return to normal. Staff will be working exceptionally hard, but as we warned earlier in the year, the need for social distancing and infection control is unavoidably slowing the service down.”

Mr Appleby also highlighted that the overall waiting list had increased for the second month in a row to 4.22 million while the number of 52-week waiters continued to increase to 111,026 – the largest figure for 12 years.

Tim Gardiner, senior policy fellow at the Health Foundation, said the official data was just “the tip of the iceberg” as some patients were still waiting for services to fully open.

He added: “Meanwhile, the health service is beginning to experience pressure from growing numbers of patients with COVID-19, as well as the expected increase in seasonal illnesses as people go back to work and school. September saw 36 per cent more calls to NHS 111 than the same month last year, while emergency admissions are nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.”

In August, NHS England revealed there would be financial penalties and incentives tied to activity targets. Systems would see baseline income reduced by 25 per cent of tariff values for any shortfalls. For those who exceeded it they would receive 75 per cent of tariff value.

An NHSE spokesman said: “Hospitals are carrying out more than a million routine appointments and operations per week, with around three times the levels of elective patients admitted to hospital than in April, as they continue to make progress on getting services back to pre-covid levels including scanning services which are delivering millions of urgent checks and tests.

”It is obviously vital for patients that this progress continues, and isn’t jeopardised by a second wave of covid infections spiralling out of control.”