Revealed: How many people waiting for routine treatment at Portsmouth Hospitals Trust in April

A think tank has warned the Government is ‘moving in the opposite direction’ from its goal of bringing waiting lists down.

NHS England figures show 51,902 patients were waiting for non-urgent elective operations or treatment at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust (PHT) at the end of April – up from 50,143 in March, and 46,298 in April 2022.

Of those, 1,833 (4%) had been waiting for longer than a year.

The median waiting time from referral at an NHS Trust to treatment at PHT was 14 weeks at the end of April – up from 13 weeks in March.

Nationally, 7.4 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of April.

Dr Sarah Scobie, acting director of research at the Nuffield Trust think tank said: ‘Yet another month of hitting a record high for the NHS waiting list will be very worrying for the government and shows it is moving in the opposite direction from its ambition to bring down waiting lists by 2025.’

She said the charity is concerned by the speed and scale at which the backlog is growing.

‘The NHS and its staff are throwing more and more resources at recovering the backlog as the summer months approach, but challenges, including industrial action and staff absences, make keeping up with the weight of demand incredibly difficult,’ she added.

A spokesperson for PHT said: ‘We are seeing increasing demand on our services for non-elective treatment and operations.

‘We are committed to reducing long waits and our teams are working hard to reduce the length of time people have to wait to be treated.

‘We have recently met the milestone of reducing waiting times for elective treatment to 104 weeks and then down to 78 weeks.

‘The focus now is to reduce further to 65 weeks throughout the course of this financial year.

‘We are continuing to monitor patients who are waiting for treatment on a regular basis and patients are prioritised based on their clinical need.’

Separate figures show 1.6 million patients in England were waiting for a key diagnostic test in April – the same as in March.

At PHT, 7,422 patients were waiting for one of 12 standard tests, such as an MRI scan, non-obstetric ultrasound or gastroscopy at this time.

Of them, 2,012 (27%) had been waiting for at least six weeks.

Other figures show cancer patients at PHT are not being seen quickly enough.

The NHS states 85% of cancer patients urgently referred by a GP should start treatment within 62 days.

But NHS England data shows just 58% of patients urgently referred by the NHS who received cancer treatment at Portsmouth Hospitals Trust in April began treatment within two months of their referral.

That was down from both 61% in March, and 73% in April last year.

Cancer Research UK’s director of evidence and implementation Naser Turabi said: ‘This data shows that all cancer waiting time targets in England have been missed and are amongst the worst on record.

‘Despite the tireless work of NHS staff, people affected by cancer continue to experience unacceptable delays for vital diagnosis and treatment.

‘We need to see urgent political leadership and action on cancer, and urge the UK Government to publish the long-awaited workforce plan for England.’

NHS England said staff are continuing to make progress on recovering routine services despite the it facing ‘the most disruptive industrial action in its history in April’, with four days of strikes by junior doctors resulting in more than 195,000 appointments and procedures having to be rescheduled.

Accident and emergency units across the country also experienced the busiest May on record.