Tag: Health Secretary Wes Streeting

Crack teams get patients off waiting lists at twice the speed

Sending top doctors into areas of highest economic inactivity in England is ‘busting through the backlog’

  • Targeted approach is cutting waiting lists twice as fast as rest of the country
  • Plans to roll scheme out further as government delivers on its Plan for Change

A new Labour government initiative to send top doctors to support hospital trusts in areas where more people are out of work and waiting for treatment is cutting waiting lists faster, new data shows.

In September, Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting sent in crack teams spearheaded by top clinicians to NHS hospitals serving communities with high levels of economic inactivity. The teams support NHS trusts to go further and faster to improve care in these areas, where more people are neither employed nor actively seeking work, for reasons including ill health.

Latest data from October 2024 to January 2025 shows waiting lists in these areas have, on average, been reduced at more than double the rate of the rest of the country, falling 130% faster in areas where the government scheme is in action than the national average.  

A total of 37,000 cases have been removed from the waiting lists in those 20 areas, averaging almost 2,000 patients per local trust.

The teams of leading clinicians introducing more productive ways of working to deliver more procedures, including running operating theatres like Formula One pit stops to cut down on wasted time between operations.

The scheme has delivered huge improvements in areas of high economic inactivity. They include:

  • The Northern Care Alliance & Manchester Foundation Trust – where a series of ‘super clinics’ with up to 100 patients being seen a day in one-stop appointments where patients can be assessed, diagnosed and put on the treatment pathway in one appointment. These include Employment Advisors on site to support patients with any barriers to returning to work. Those that require surgery are then booked to ‘high flow theatre’ lists such as those at the Trafford Elective Surgery Hub.
  • Warrington & Halton – which has run Super Clinics for Gynaecology delivered at weekends, with one-stop models reducing the need for follow up appointments.
  • East Lancs Hospitals Trust – which has focused on streamlining diagnostic pathways and increasing capacity for Echocardiography, or heart scans, reducing the waiting list for these from around 2700 patients to around 700 – with all of patients having their scan within 6 weeks.

Data shows the number of people unable to work due to long term sickness is at its highest since the 1990s. The number of adults economically inactive due to ill-health rose from 2.1m in July 2019 to a peak of 2.9m in October 2023. The decision to send the crack teams to these 20 trusts first was based on the government’s aim to get people back to health and back to work, helping to cut the welfare bill.

Following the success of the programme, the government has confirmed similar crack teams will be rolled out to additional providers this year to boost NHS productivity and cut waiting times further. 

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said: “The investment and reform this government has introduced has already cut NHS waiting lists by 193,000, but there is much more to do.

“By sending top doctors to provide targeted support to hospitals in the areas of highest economic inactivity, we are getting sick Brits back to health and back to work.

“I am determined to transform health and social care so it works better for patients – but also because I know that transformation can help drag our economy out of the sluggish productivity and poor growth of recent years.

“We have to get more out of the NHS for what we put in. By taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS, reforming the way surgeries are running, we are cutting waiting lists twice as fast at no extra cost to the taxpayer.  

“As we boost NHS productivity and deliver fundamental reform through our Plan for Change, you will see improvements across the service in the coming weeks and months.”

The new data comes after the Westminster government confirmed the abolition of NHS England, centralising the way that health care is delivered, cutting bureaucracy and improving care outcomes for patients up and down the country.

The government inherited waiting lists of over 7.6 million last July, and rising numbers of patients waiting months and years to get the treatment they need to get back to their jobs.

Thanks to immediate action taken by the government- including ending the strikes and investing more in the NHS – overall waiting lists have fallen for the last five months in a row, dropping by 193,000.

The targeted teams are the latest success delivered by the government as it continues its fundamental reform of the NHS through the Plan for Change.

Soon after taking office, it confirmed an extra £1.8 billion to deliver extra elective activity across the country.

This helped create an extra 2 million elective care appointments between July and November last year – delivering on the government’s manifesto pledge seven months early.

Other plans to increase elective care productivity and cut waiting lists include opening community diagnostic centres 12 hours a day, seven days a week, revolutionising the NHS app so patients can receive test results and book appointments, and increasing use of the independent sector to improve patient choice.

New funding to kickstart delivery of two million extra NHS appointments

Chancellor confirms the NHS will receive funding needed to deliver extra 40,000 elective appointments per week

  • Chancellor and Health Secretary confirm funding plans to increase elective appointments ahead of the Budget tomorrow.
  • New funding and reform puts the NHS on course to reduce waiting lists.
  • Additional capital investment will further support reduced waiting times, with £1.5bn for new surgical hubs and scanners, alongside £70 million for new radiotherapy machines.

Funding to support the delivery of an extra two million NHS operations, scans and appointments a year to significantly cut waiting lists across England has been announced by the Chancellor and Health Secretary today. This comes following over a decade of neglect and underinvestment of the NHS.

Ahead of her Budget on Wednesday, the Chancellor has confirmed that the NHS will receive the funding needed to deliver an extra 40,000 elective appointments per week, delivering on one of the Government’s First Steps in office to reduce waiting times in the NHS. This includes an additional £1.8bn the government has invested in elective activity this year since the July Statement.

This will be supported by a significant uplift of capital investment, with new capacity including surgical hubs and scanners, meaning thousands of additional procedures and millions of diagnostic tests across the country, alongside funding for new radiotherapy machines to improve cancer treatment.

In his recent independent investigation into the NHS in England, Lord Darzi highlighted that the NHS is in “critical condition”. Patients across England are waiting too long, with the waiting list at over 7.6 million in August. In the same month, over 280,000 had been waiting for an operation, scan or appointment for over a year.

Today’s announcement is an integral step in reducing the waiting list and puts the NHS on course to meet the commitment that 92% of people wait less than 18 weeks to start treatment in the NHS.

The Chancellor’s budget tomorrow will set out how this government will fix the foundations to deliver change, by fixing the NHS and rebuilding Britain, while ensuring working people don’t face higher taxes in their payslips.

It will focus on “investment, investment, investment” in order to get the economy moving again and demonstrate how this government will take the long-term decisions needed to grow the economy and restore the country’s public services.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Our NHS is the lifeblood of Britain. It exemplifies public services at their best, there for us when we need it and free at the point of use, for everyone in this country.

“That’s why I am putting an end to the neglect and underinvestment it has seen for over a decade now.

“We will be known as the government that took the NHS from its worst crisis in its history, got it back on its feet again and made it fit for the bright future ahead of it.”

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Our NHS is broken, but it’s not beaten, and this Budget is the moment we start to fix it.

“The Chancellor is backing the NHS with new investment to cut waiting lists, which stand at an unacceptable 7.6 million today. Alongside extra funding, we’re sending crack teams of top surgeons to hospitals across the country, to reform how they run their surgeries, treat more patients, and make the money go further.”

Building an NHS fit for the future is one of this Government’s five priority missions; but it is clear that alongside sustainable investment, the NHS will need significant reform across the board to be truly transformed.

The Chancellor has therefore confirmed an ambitious reform programme across health and social care in England, including reforming the delivery of elective activity and patient pathways. Billions of pounds are set to be invested in technology and digital innovations across the NHS to boost productivity and unlock significant savings for the NHS in the long-term.

The funding comes after the Government last week launched ‘Change NHS: help build a health service fit for the future’, a national conversation to help develop the 10 Year Health Plan, which will set out our long-term vision for health and the path to delivering the three shifts to reform and transform health: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.

Starting this week, the NHS will help people back to health and back to work by sending teams of top clinicians to hospitals across the country to help roll out reforms to cut waiting lists in hospitals – which will start with those in areas of the highest economic inactivity.