The backlog is already having a horrendous impact on patients and their families. While researching a new BBC Radio 4 documentary, The Backlog, one of the most striking things was how much interest there was in private care – with patients resorting to using GoFundMe pages to raise the money to pay for surgery.
Take Rob Weston, a 34-year-old father of three, who lives with his wife and children in Yateley in Hampshire. As a teenager, he was diagnosed with a heart condition. Three years ago he suffered a cardiac arrest and has been waiting for life-saving open heart surgery ever since. He lives in fear of death. He says: “I can feel flickers in my heart and when my blood pressure drops you start to get pins and needles in your hands and feet. Every time that happens it‘s in the back of my head.” For him, the surgery will take all that fear away. He is almost halfway to his goal of £60,000.
He is not wrong to be worried. The British Heart Foundation has calculated that over the last year there have been about 6,000 excess deaths from heart disease than one would have anticipated if it had been a normal year. Some of that is thought to relate to delays in diagnosing, assessing, and treating patients. There have also been 240,000 missing urgent referrals for suspected cancer since the start of the pandemic. When they do show up in the system, nobody knows what kind of shape they will be in.
Liz Heath, a consultant with LaingBuisson, which supplies healthcare market data, sees evidence of an increase in demand for private care which is linked to waiting lists. Spire Healthcare, a independent hospital group, recently reported a big jump in its second-quarter activity compared to the same quarter in 2019: there was a 25 per cent increase in revenue from people who are paying for care out of their own pocket (the “self-pay” market). Many patients are just looking for diagnostic work, so they can have reassurance. An X-ray or an MRI is usually more affordable than a procedure. This also allows them to join the queue for surgery if they need to.
Ms Heath says “a mix and match approach” may be where we are heading, but many people simply cannot afford it. That is the case for artist Pamela Leonard, a 65-year-old in Holyhead, Wales who has waited more than five years for a hip operation, has had two cancelled operations and lives on a diet of heavy opioid drugs. She lives in agony, is virtually bed-bound and breaks down in tears all the time. Her son, who takes pains to say that they are huge supporters of the NHS, has also just started a GoFundMe page. They need £15,000.
