NHS waiting list could grow after Covid, health boss warns

The NHS waiting list could grow after the Covid pandemic, a health boss has warned.

NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson issued a stark warning when he gave an interview on Sky News’ Trevor Phillips On Sunday programme.

He noted the numbers on the waiting list could grow because of the people who didn’t come forward during Covid.

“We just need to be careful about saying we’re just going to judge NHS performance solely by how big the waiting list is, because we know it is likely to grow because of all of those people who didn’t come forward during Covid are going to come forward,” he said.

“Nobody in the NHS would want to a waiting list of this size, but what’s happened is we’ve had two problems.

“The first is we have insufficient capacity in the NHS after a decade of the longest and deepest financial squeeze in NHS history. So the waiting lists were already growing before we went into Covid, and then what we’ve had is this huge disruption over the Covid period”.

Mr Hopson said the new NHS recovery plan has “very stretching” targets of a 30% increase in the levels of activity by 2024 or 2025 compared to pre-Covid times.

He said he is “incredibly frustrated” the Government will not back a plan to tackle workforce shortages in the NHS.

He said: “There is good news down the track in that we are now seeing higher levels of people entering training, but if I’m really honest, we’ve got this very difficult period over the next two or three years where we know we won’t have enough staff…

“There will be a significant premium on recruiting people from overseas, but that’s not a comfortable place to be in…

“So we’ve got to have a proper workforce plan, and if I’m honest, I’m incredibly frustrated about the fact that the Government will not sign up to the idea of a proper long-term workforce plan, which is what we have in every other sector of our economy and what we have in every other national health system.

“I can’t understand why the Government won’t sign up to what seems to me to be blindingly obvious.”