While most of those waiting are adults, almost 300,000 of them are children and young people seeking help for problems such as developmental delays and long-term conditions. The total number of people in England on the “hidden” waiting list for care from community health services rose from 900,000 in January to 1.05 million in May, the Health Service Journal reported. Some face delays of up to 120 weeks before receiving aid. They are separate from the record 6.6 million people currently waiting for hospital treatment, mostly surgery, for procedures such as joint replacement or cataract removal. The website has obtained NHS England’s previously unpublished ‘community health services sitrep’ analysis, which shows how the number of people waiting to access such services has risen by 35% since the organization first published details of this waiting list in August last year. The analysis shows that 321,000 adults in England are waiting for help, mainly physiotherapy, to deal with musculoskeletal problems such as back and knee pain. Another 120,000 on the list have foot problems and need care from podiatry services. The 300,000 under 18s include 74,300 who need speech therapy. Siobhan Melia, chair of the Community Services Network, warned that the inability of NHS community services to provide people waiting with care as quickly as they would like could lead to people becoming so ill that they seek help at A&E. “Delays in accessing some services, including speech and language therapies, can have a lifelong impact, especially for children and young people,” she told the HSJ. “Long waits for services to help people manage musculoskeletal conditions, such as low back and neck pain, can make existing conditions worse and mean many people could end up attending [accident and emergency] with intense pain”. The leaked document also revealed that 514 hospital services that were suspended when Covid-19 broke out in the spring of 2020 – almost a quarter of the total – have yet to return to full operation. Across England, 37% of children’s speech and language therapy services are still not at full pre-pandemic capacity. The majority of audiology (70%) and musculoskeletal (63%) services are in the same situation. “These figures demonstrate what we have been warning about for some time – that the failure to fully reopen physiotherapy services has a terrible impact on patients,” said Professor Karen Middleton, chief executive of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. “The focus on waiting lists for surgery is understandable, but these same lists could get longer without urgent support for community services. “These services are dealing with problems that if left untreated could seriously worsen and require surgery or other long-term interventions, so it is important for the system as a whole that we see immediate action.” An NHS boss told the HSJ that NHS England’s lack of focus on rapidly growing backlogs in community care, compared to the huge efforts being made to tackle the 6.6 million acute care waiting list, was “unethical” . Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said there was a “pattern of inequality” in NHS managers’ response to long waits for non-acute care, including mental illness. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We are working hard to tackle the Covid backlog to ensure people get the support they need across a wide range of health services.”
