NHS waiting lists will soar to 5million by 2021 – the highest ever – without extra funding, the head of NHS England has said.
With 4million patients currently on the list, an extra million will result in one in 10 patients in England being denied a timely operation, warned Simon Stevens.
He also said that controversial rationing policies adopted in some parts of the NHS could be rolled out nationally without more money.
On current levels of funding, the NHS will not be able to make improvements in cancer care or mental health, he told the NHS Providers conference in Birmingham.
The NHS is facing a £30billion ‘black hole’ in funding by 2020/21.
An extra 1m patients will be on the list over next 4 years, says NHS England head Simon Stevens (stock photo)
The NHS needs £4 billion more next year to prevent patient care from deteriorating, according to analysis by the Health Foundation, the King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust.
Mr Stevens said he was bound by duty to set out the consequences of what would happen without more money being pumped into the struggling health service.
He told delegates: ‘The budget for the NHS next year is well short of what is currently needed to properly look after our patients and their families in their time of greatest need.
‘After seven years of understandable but unprecedented constraint, on the current budget outlook, the NHS can no longer do everything that is being asked of it.
‘On the current funding outlook, the NHS waiting list will grow to five million people by 2021. That’s an extra million people on the waiting list. One in 10 of us waiting for an operation – the highest number ever.’
Rationing of ‘routine operations’
The news comes after the NHS’s financial watchdog yesterday warned lives are being cut short because hospitals are having to ration routine operations.
Jim Mackey, head of NHS Improvement, said the health service was ‘juggling hand to mouth’ and having to ‘deprioritise’ non-urgent surgery.
If the NHS was not given more money in the Budget, in two weeks’ time, there would have to be an ‘adjustment’ of what it was expected to provide, he urged.
‘At some point there’s going to have to be an adjustment of what the expectations are,’ he said.
‘We’re all just juggling hand-to-mouth, none of us really feel like we’ve got a long-term plan.’
Referring to hospitals ‘deprioritising’ non-urgent operations – as a way of saving money – he said: ‘If you’re 85 and you can’t walk, we’re going to shorten your life.
‘That’s wrong, that’s not what we all want as society.’
Additionally, the chief executive of NHS Providers, recently warned hospital death rates and infection levels were starting to rise.
Chris Hopson also said that targets on cancer treatment, mixed sex wards and waiting times were ‘starting to slip back at an increasing pace.’
He claimed the UK would need to invest an extra £900 per patient to match the healthcare spending in Germany.
Potential savings
Research out today identified cost-cutting measures the cash-strapped health service can make to save the NHS £150million a year.
The review by Imperial College London found 71 commonly performed procedures or practices that are costly but make little or no difference to patients’ safety.
The team advised that robotic surgery has ‘little or no advantage’ compared with traditional keyhole operations.
They also recommend axing surgical masks to save the NHS £150,000 a year because there is ‘no evidence’ to show that they prevent infections.
It also found hernia repair operations – costing the NHS £28 million a year – were being carried out for people with few symptoms who do not get much benefit from them.
Study author and surgeon Humza Malik wrote: ‘An expected £30 billion funding gap is expected by 2020 in the NHS.
‘This provides motivation to identify and reduce the use of healthcare interventions that deliver little benefit and which could be substituted with less costly alternatives without affecting safety, and quality of care.
‘Stopping low-value services represents a significantly greater opportunity for efficiency savings than thought previously.’
But patient groups are concerned patients who genuinely benefit from procedures would be denied.