As political parties push on with their election campaigns, grand promises are being made about tackling sky-high NHS waiting lists. If elected, Keir Starmer has promised to deliver 40,000 extra appointments, scans and operations a week to get non-urgent waits down to the 18-week target, while Rishi Sunak has pledged to boost the number of GP appointments and increase the scope of pharmacists to treat more common conditions. There are currently 7.5 million cases of people waiting for elective (non-urgent) treatment – three times what it was a decade ago, and the highest figure since records began in 2007.
These long waits are causing people’s physical and mental health to deteriorate. Take, for instance, the 800,000 people waiting in pain for orthopaedic operations such as knee or hip replacements, whose joints will have worsened by the time their operations come around; or the tens of thousands waiting for a dementia diagnosis, whose disease progresses during this time.
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