Elective Recovery

Elective Recovery

● Our nurses, doctors and care workers have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic, treating over half a million patients, administering more than 140 million vaccines and saving over a hundred thousand lives. But the pandemic has taken its toll and waiting times are longer than ever before.

● At the start of the pandemic there was a need for a temporary postponement of all non-urgent elective operations, to prevent the overwhelming of NHS services and free up 30,000 beds. Today, over six million people in England are currently waiting for routine tests, operations and procedures. We know that waiting lists will rise before they fall again because we want to ensure the ‘missing demand’ lost during the pandemic returns and that people receive the care they need. We are aware that over ten million people who otherwise would have come forward did not do so over the pandemic

● The new Health and Social Care Levy, along with an increase to the rates of dividend tax, will raise around £13 billion per year for spending on health and social care across the UK. And we must make sure that every penny is well spent so that, between community pop up clinics, more face-to-face GP appointments, new cancer screening machines, and a hugely expanded mental health provision, the NHS can maximise its ability to check and treat patients. 

● The plan to clear the backlogs commits the NHS to deliver 17 million more diagnostic tests over the next three years and to increase our annual capacity by nine million additional treatments and diagnostic procedures. In addition the NHS will aim to deliver around 30 per cent more elective activity than it was doing before the pandemic by 2024-25.

● The plan provides further commitments from the NHS:

o a reduction in maximum waiting times, so that waits of longer than a year for elective care are eliminated by March 2025 except for a limited number of specific cases. Within this, no one will wait longer than two years by July 2022, or longer than 65 weeks by March 2024;

o diagnostic tests are a key part of many elective care pathways. By March 2025, 95 per cent of patients needing a diagnostic test receive will receive it within six weeks; and 

o by March 2023 we will 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 the following year, 75 per cent 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.  

Key facts

● To support recovery of elective services, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022-23 to 2024-25, supported by the revenue from the

Health and Social Care Levy. This is in addition to the £2 billion Elective

Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available last year to help drive up and protect elective activity. 

● We plan to spend £8 billion to deliver 30 per cent more elective activity by 202425 than before the pandemic.

● The Government has also committed to a £5.9 billion investment in capital, for new beds, equipment and technology:

o £1.5 billion towards elective recovery services, to include new surgical hubs, increased bed capacity and equipment to help elective services recover, including surgeries and other medical procedures;

o £2.1 billion to modernise digital technology on the frontline, improve cyber security and the NHS’s use of data and redesign care pathways; and 

o £2.3 billion to help increase the volume of diagnostic activity and reduce patient waiting times with ambitions to roll out at least 100 community diagnostic centres over the next three years to help clear backlogs of people waiting for tests, such as MRI, ultrasound and CT scans. 

● In December 2021 and January 2022 NHS staff completed over 2.4 million operations and other elective care while also providing treatment to nearly 135,000 COVID-19 patients in England.

● In January 2022, 75 per cent of patients saw a cancer specialist within two weeks following a referral from their GP and 89.6 per cent of patients received treatment within 31 days of a decision to treat.