HOSPITAL trusts across Lancashire and South Cumbria are aiming to deliver thousands more procedures and appointments than they did before the pandemic struck in an attempt to reduce the backlog of patients caused by Covid.

The region was confirmed last month as one of the government’s “accelerator” areas, which will receive a share from a £160m pot designed to enable the NHS to get through a greater volume of pre-planned work across a three-month period.

The healthcare system in Lancashire and South Cumbria has set itself a target of delivering 20 per cent more activity by the end of July than it was doing at the equivalent point in 2019.

In February 2020, East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust had a total waiting list of 31,640 with zero patients waiting more than 52 weeks.

By April 2021, the total list was 30,894 but the number of patients waiting more than 52 weeks had risen to 1,215.

A meeting of the region’s integrated care system (ICS) board earlier this month heard that, if the target is hit, it would mean over 6,000 additional inpatient day case operations would be undertaken.

Under the plans, almost 8,000 extra diagnostic tests would be carried out, while over 72,000 more people would receive outpatient appointments.

That is against a backdrop of the combined waiting list across Lancashire’s four NHS trusts increasing by more than 20,000 patients between February 2020 and April 2021 to stand at over 123,000 – and the number of people waiting over a year for treatment leaping from just two to 11,912 over the same period.

Board members heard that, during May, when the accelerator work got under way, cancellation rates were running at a “very low” three per cent – and that there was now a greater confidence amongst patients to come into hospital for treatment than there had been during earlier stages of the pandemic.

Kevin McGee, who will later this year take up the post of chief executive at the trust that runs the Royal Preston and Chorley and South Ribble Hospital, said that the step up in work was a “really big ask, but a laudable one – and a good ambition in terms of the level of waiting list that we’ve got”.

“We’re looking to extend our capacity through weekend working and we’re looking to both insource and outsource activity.” added Mr. McGee, meaning the additional work could be undertaken directly by NHS trusts or paid for in the private sector.

He also warned that one of the risks to the ambition the region had set itself was any increase in Covid admissions, particularly to critical care, where space is required for people to recover from the most serious pre-planned operations.

Separately, Lancashire and South Cumbria also has access to England’s £1bn elective recovery fund, which sees areas receive extra cash for any additional work they do.

Kevin McGee also revealed that it was a “long-term ambition” for Lancashire and South Cumbria to have a shared waiting list across all of the hospital trusts in the region, so that patients could be sent wherever there was space to treat them.

“That different way of working in terms of trying to match our waiting lists to where the capacity is available…is really important for the future,” said Mr. McGee, who will step down from his current roles as chief executive of both Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and East Lancashire Hospitals Trust when he takes on the top job at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LTH) later in the year.

Moves in that direction have already occurred in one service, with eye patients from East Lancashire being sent to Blackpool, where there was spare capacity for the treatment they needed.  

However, Graham Burgess, chair of Blackburn with Darwen Clinical Commissioning Group, warned of the practical challenges for some patients if they were to be treated further from home in other parts of the sprawling Lancashire and South Cumbria patch. He warned that plans could pose a problem for people living in areas with “very low car ownership and high deprivation”.