Waiting lists for NHS operations have increased dramatically in the last year, the M.E.N. can reveal today.
At three Greater Manchester trusts - Pennine, Tameside and Salford - the proportion of people missing the 18 week target for surgery has doubled in 12 months.
And in Stockport – the trust with the longest wait – one third of people are now waiting 18 weeks or more for operations – up from 18.1 per cent in March 2010 and just 9.4 per cent in 2009.
The waiting times relate to non-emergency general surgery including hip, knee, eye, tonsils and heart operations.
There have been increases at every hospital trust across Greater Manchester except Wythenshawe and Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh.
Three trusts – Pennine, Stockport and Central Manchester – have already drawn up an emergency action plan, with the help of NHS Manchester.
Pennine, which runs hospitals in Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and North Manchester, has been forced to call in the Department of Health to help it clear the backlog.
Around 1,000 patients at Pennine are still waiting for dates for surgery. A year ago one in ten patients missed the 18 week deadline, now one in five wait longer than the target.
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It is understood that 200 people were on the waiting list for surgery for orthopaedics in November but this figure now stands at almost 800. Bosses have vowed to have nobody waiting longer than 18 weeks from September.
The rise comes as the NHS in Greater Manchester works to save almost £1bn over the next four years. It is understood some patients could be sent to hospitals in other parts of the region for their operations.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley axed Labour’s 18-week waiting list target last summer. But David Cameron promised patients would still be seen within the limit.
Bosses across the region are blaming a combination of a busy winter and having to cancel planned surgery in January and February to free up beds amid fears of a swine flu crisis.
Hugh Mullen, Pennine’s director of operations, said: "We have got around 1,000 patients waiting for dates across the trust, whilst this is too many it is important to remember we serve a community of 830,000. It has been a problem for a lot of trusts nationally over the past few months – we’ve had a problem since November. We are offering patients choice, if they want to go to another hospital we can send them elsewhere but we find that many want to be treated locally and would rather wait."
Chris Burke, chief executive of Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Stepping Hill, said they were working with local GPs to try to reduce waiting times. He said the hospital was ‘extremely popular’ for orthopaedic surgery, which caused capacity problems.
He said: "Very few patients who are offered alternatives, which would mean them being seen earlier, accept if it also means them being treated elsewhere."
A Department of Health spokesman insisted reforms will ‘drive improvements in quality and outcomes across the land’.
At Tameside, 93.9 per cent of patients were treated within 18 weeks last March but this had dropped to 78.8 per cent a year later.
A Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spokesman said: "We can reassure our patients that, following a drive to address this issue in February and March this year, we are confident that, going forward, we will meet our key national access and waiting time targets for 2011/12."
At Salford, 91.2 per cent of patients were treated within 18 weeks last March but this had dropped to 80.4 per cent by March 2011.
But waiting times improved at the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust (Wythenshawe) from 83.1 per cent of patients being treated within 18 weeks last March to 90.3 per cent the following 12 months and at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh improved from 87.8 per cent to 92.1 per cent.
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This is news?? I waited 8 months for my knee op 8 years ago. Sometimes you just have to be patient! (get it??)
It is a great mistake to think that the NHS is run for the benefit of the patients: it is run for the benefit of those who work for it and the union bosses keep everyone in line. Yes, there are wonderful nurses and wonderful doctors but the system is not wonderful. It needs a complete shake-up - the patient must come first. And the political correctness must go. Can someone tell me why anyone going to the Royal Bolton Hospital is given a form to fill in about his or her race or sexual orientation? This does not happen at the private Beaumont hospital where one is offered a comfortable chair and a cup of coffee and treated like a human being not a number.
I'm afraid our local hospitals are failing across the board
So - some trusts can meet and better targets and some cannot.
When was anyone sacked from the NHS for imcompetence, because it should be happening now.
The NHS is for the patients benefit, not the staff and how would they feel if they were treated by everyone else with the distain they show us?
Want your car fixing? Wait 4 months.
Want to claim on your insurance? - ring back in 3 months
Want to book a flight somewhere? - ring back in 14 weeks.
Unless you want to pay the consultant privately, of course.
This is not news to me. My wife had pre op tests mid January, they were out of date by May and had to be done again, she is still waiting for a date for the operation.
On the other hand, after a fall she was operated on within 24 hours to repair a broken arm, and fit a steel plate.
yep pennine acute has an awful long waiting list.
Over a year for just a 15 minuite cotasone injection in back or midazolam.
Incredible that our health service has been hit so servere.
Now the con/dems are doing a u-turn on nhs reform,that should never be altered but (only to better the service).
If you think thats bad wait til the Camerontives change things again, you will be lucky if you have nay hospitals left in the North West after he has sold them all off to his US Chums,(Southern Cross) Nursing homes are a good example
I live in Cyprus. A small island with a population of less than 1M. I was daignosed with a hernia and had to wait a whole 7 days for the surgery, which was eventually paid for by the NHS.
Just what has gone wrong with the hospitals in England?
It would appear that they could have a lot to learn from a small mediteranean island.
it's not just op's that have to wait.im having a scan finally on wednesday on my shoulder/arm which i hurt in february,then ive got to wait till november to see the doctor for the results,it is getting crazy.
Apparantly the NHS recieves about £2,000 for every person in the UK. Not a huge ammount given the costs of health care.
I suppose, given the state if the countries finances and how government sees best to prioritise taxation and spending, we will have to accept that we are not going to get the high levels of service we might have hoped for.
Yet another IDENTIFIED problem brought to our attention about the NHS - tell us something we don't know but get this NHS system and it's staff sorted first! Well done Stockport express keep publishing true stories like these! Hopefully the NHS will be a National Health Service not a Nasty Health Service like the one we have in Stockport at the moment
When Lansley and Cameron have finished waiting 18 months will be nothing, the Tory champagne swilling millionaire sect are not interested in waiting lists anyhow as they don't use the NHS. The worst thing is that Nick Egg is just sat back watching all this happen.
Everytime the nasty party is in power, waiting becomes years instead of weeks. It happened under Thatcher and is starting to happen now under cleggeron
Election May 2010. Why is anyone surprised in June 2011 that waiting time have increased?
This is not the NHS that Cameron promised would be ring-fenced and no top down changes? Who can believe politicians?
Voter: The NHS is ruined by the unions? I suppose they are forcing "consultants" to attend hospital only once a week for half-an-hour to do a ward-walk and are making them spend the rest of their time at private practices and private hospitals? I suppose the unions are forcing the consultants to take 200,000 pounds plus each year as a paltry wage for the fantastic work they do. I suppose the unions are forcing the managers to hire doctors and nurses from Asia and Africa because the unions are demanding such ridiculously high wages for those greed English nurses. I suppose the unions forced Cameron to scrap those stupid waiting list targets thus freeing up manager to ... forget all about waiting lists. The unionists and communists are ruining the country? Are you mad?
Voter: The NHS is ruined by the unions? I suppose they are forcing "consultants" to attend hospital only once a week for half-an-hour to do a ward-walk and are making them spend the rest of their time at private practices and private hospitals? I suppose the unions are forcing the consultants to take 200,000 pounds plus each year as a paltry wage for the fantastic work they do. I suppose the unions are forcing the managers to hire doctors and nurses from Asia and Africa because the unions are demanding such ridiculously high wages for those greed English nurses. I suppose the unions forced Cameron to scrap those stupid waiting list targets thus freeing up manager to ... forget all about waiting lists. The unionists and communists are ruining the country? Are you mad?
You lot voted the Tories in. They told you they would introduce massive cut backs. But you still voted them in.
Don't now come whinging to me!!
I thought that the whole idea of the exercise was to cut waiting time's? Or is this another reversal by this incompetent government? you know we have made a decision to extend the waiting time instead of reducing it, just like several other policy decisions that we made prteviously!
And we send million to places that have a large space program and a larger army than the uk.
Britain gives £295m to India – India spends £200m on world’s tallest statue? and we have people dying because lack of money for drugs and operations.