Patients are waiting longer for treatments at Sheffield hospitals during the pandemic

The Royal College of Surgeons of England warned there could be a backlog "double whammy" following the crisis, when new patients who come forward as the pandemic eases are combined with those already waiting for care.

According to NHS rules, patients referred for non-urgent consultant-led elective care should start treatment within 18 weeks.

But NHS data shows 23 per cent of patients on the waiting list for elective operations or other treatment at Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust and 16 per cent at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust at the end of April had been waiting for more than 18 weeks.

Dr David Hughes, Medical Director, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “Due to the COVID-19 outbreak all hospitals were instructed to postpone many aspects of non-emergency care in order to minimise risk to patients but also many of our patients were isolating or chose to postpone their care. However during the outbreak our clinical teams have been continually reviewing all patients waiting for care and we have worked hard to re-design many of our services such as introducing video outpatient appointments or alternative treatments so that appropriate patients could safely have the care they need.

“For those patients who are still receiving treatment, the vast majority are well within 18 weeks of their GP referral. Indeed for patients who needed to be admitted to hospital in April which was the peak of the outbreak, the average time from GP referral to treatment or an operation was just over 4.5 weeks and for patents who did not need to be admitted it was 8 weeks. In April we had 16% of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks compared to the national average of 29%. Safety remains our top priority but as the number of cases of COVID decreases we are looking at how we can resume even more services over the coming weeks. We would like to thank everyone for their patience and support during these difficult times. We really appreciate it.”

A spokesman for Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust said: "NHS staff have pulled out the stops to treat almost 100,000 people for coronavirus during this pandemic, while also ensuring that people can still access urgent tests, checks and treatment in as safe a way as possible.

“Now that the NHS has managed the first wave of coronavirus, there is an important job to do to help people whose non-urgent operation or test was postponed to protect their safety, and that’s exactly what local teams are now planning for, while also remaining ready for any future increase in COVID cases.”

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