HEALTHCARE P LANNING
COVID recovery: delivery plans
Kate Woodhead RGN DMS discusses the recently published ‘Delivery Plan’ for tackling the backlog of elective care, in the wake of the pandemic. People who are waiting for care are becoming increasingly desperate to receive their surgery, and many are suffering and in pain. So, how can we tackle the backlog and ‘build back better’, while caring for a workforce that is still suffering the after-effects of COVID-19?
The 6.1 million people who are waiting for a letter to tell them they have an appointment to discuss their immediate care needs will be interested in the recently published ‘Delivery Plan’ for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care.1
People who are waiting for
care, especially those who have waited longest, are suffering in pain and disability and are becoming increasingly desperate to receive their surgery or their treatment. Elective care, as we know, covers a broad swathe of non-urgent services often delivered in the acute sector, from diagnostic tests, scans, cancer treatments and surgical procedures. Hospitals are already working really hard to reduce the long waiting lists, which have occurred as a result of many of those services closing or reducing throughput, during the pandemic. Together with COVID patients, it was as much as many hospitals could manage to deal with urgent and emergency patients.
A recent report from the Nuffield Trust2 sets out an interesting review of how the UK performed relative to sixteen other countries’ developed health systems, providing some lessons for us to review and consider as part of preparation for another pandemic and recovery. It suggests that other well equipped health systems have been left in vulnerable positions and many countries are now facing the very same catch-up imperatives as the NHS. The struggle that the NHS will have in completing the ambitious plans, which are set out in the Delivery Plan, will be influenced (in this author’s view) by the parlous state of the workforce, in terms of professional vacancies and the added difficulties of exhaustion and burnout. It is not only this key element that presents an issue, but also that the whole focus is being placed onto the acute care sector – far more emphasis needs to be placed on community
and primary care, enabling discharge from hospitals into the social care service. This is not only a missed opportunity but may well provide many barriers to success.
England’s delivery plan The Plan commits the NHS to using a funding add-on for elective care that is designed to deliver around 30% more elective activity than it was before the pandemic, by 2024/25, after accounting for the impact of an improved care offer through system transformation and advice and guidance. The NHS will continue to work to return to pre-pandemic performance, as soon as possible. In addition: l The Plan sets out to reduce maximum waiting times, so that waits of longer than a year for elective care are eliminated by March 2025. Within this, no one will wait longer than two years by July 2022, or longer than 65 weeks by March 2024. By March 2024, 99% of people on the waiting list will be waiting less than a year.
l Diagnostic tests are a key part of many elective care pathways. By March 2025, 95% of patients needing a diagnostic test will receive it within six weeks.
l The Plan aims to return the number of people waiting more than 62 days to start treatment after being urgently referred due to suspected cancer back to pre-pandemic levels by March 2023. By the following year, 75% of patients who have been urgently referred by their GP for suspected cancer symptoms will have been diagnosed or have cancer ruled out within 28 days.
The Plan says that it will be able to deliver these ambitious targets by:
JUNE 2022
WWW.CLINICALSERVICESJOURNAL.COM l 15
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