Deaths on NHS Waiting List

A recent Labour Party freedom of information request sent to every NHS acute trust has revealed that record numbers of people are passing away having never received the treatment they were waiting for.

However, only 35 out of 138 trusts responded, and Surrey and Sussex was not one of them.
 
The data shows that around 121,000 people died across England last year while still waiting for NHS care, double the number of people who died on waiting lists in 2017/18, when the figure stood at around 60,000, and higher than in 2021, when the country was still in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
 
The NHS constitution states that patients should not wait more than 18 weeks for treatment, but almost half of patients in England today wait longer than that to receive healthcare.
 
The public now face the longest waiting lists in NHS history, with a record 7.6 million people waiting for treatment. 
 
Rishi Sunak promised to cut NHS waiting lists, but there are 600,000 more patients waiting for NHS care today than when he became Prime Minister. 
 
Labour’s Peter Lamb, said:

“I hear from people in Crawley all the time about the length of time they are waiting for care. That is so stressful and must result in some people spending their final months in pain and fear, waiting for treatment that never arrives.

“I am very concerned that Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust have not respond to this FOI request so I have submitted my own today. Crawley people deserve to know if the basic promise of the NHS – that it will be there for us when we need it – has been broken.

“One thing is clear – just as in 1997, the longer the Conservatives are in office, the longer patients will wait.

“But after 13 years of Tory failure, Labour has a plan to get our health service back on its feet. We will train the staff needed to treat patients on time again – funded by closing the non-dom tax loophole – and we will reform the service to make it fit for the future.”