Dudley hospital patient waits over two years for treatment

The NHS does not routinely publish details on how long patients have been waiting after two years – categorising them all as waiting for “two years or over”.

To find out how much longer patients had been waiting, Press Association sent Freedom of Information requests to 125 non-specialist acute hospital trusts in England.

Trusts were asked how many patients had been waiting for three years in January, how many had been waiting for at least four years, and the longest period a patient had been waiting for an appointment.

Figures provided by The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Russells Hall Hospital, show one patient had been waiting 113 weeks (around two years and two months) for treatment in the ear, nose and throat department as of the end of January.

Dudley Group chief executive Diane Wake said of the figures: “Our staff have worked around the clock to treat people with Covid-19 alongside other conditions during the pandemic.

“We are currently prioritising those patients who have been waiting the longest as well as ensuring urgent and emergency cases are seen promptly.”

NHS England data shows 23,778 people in England were waiting more than two years to start routine hospital treatment at the end of January – around nine times the 2,608 people who were waiting longer than two years in April 2021.

There could be important caveats behind the data – such as patients choosing to delay care for personal reasons or data anomalies – but the figures obtained suggest many patients have been suffering for years.

The Government and NHS England have set the ambition to eliminate all waits of more than two years, except when it is the patient’s choice, by July 2022.