Britain has longer hospital waiting times than other high-income countries

A study has found that waiting times for hospital care in Britain are among the worst of a group of ten comparable high-income countries.

About 19% of British respondents said they would have to wait at least a year for a non-urgent procedure analysis of the results found by a Commonwealth Fund. About 11% said they had waited a year or more for an appointment with a specialist.

Access to specialist appointments has declined significantly over the past decade. In 2013, Britain had one of the lowest proportions of respondents waiting more than four weeks for an appointment with a specialist.

The country scored much better on access to same-day and next-day GP appointments, but worse than average on access to out-of-hours GP care.

About 21,100 people in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, US and UK took part in the study, including 3,300 in Britain

Canada was the only other country where wait times for electives were comparable.

“These findings show that Britain is consistently bottom of the list when it comes to people’s experience of healthcare compared to other high-income countries.” said Ruth Thorlbydeputy director of policy at think tank The Health Foundation.

The Health Foundation think tank released their analysis of the Commonwealth Fund survey this week.

The results, she added in a statement“sheds even more light on how much work the government needs to do” to get the country’s public health system “back on its feet.”

Wait times for elective procedures soared during the pandemic as hospitals canceled non-urgent care as Covid-19 infections peaked.

Before 2020, years-long waits for care were relatively rare. But with the pandemic, many hospitals reported cases of patients waiting more than two years for elective procedures.

The latest official statistics show approx 6.39 million In England alone, people are currently waiting for at least one elective treatment. That is more than 11% of the population. Just over a year ago, about 300,000 people were referred for treatment.

But the pandemic is not the only factor causing delays. Waiting lists have been trending upward since about 2013, when approximately 2.5 million referrals were waiting for treatment.

Experts say Covid-19 is exacerbating existing problems caused by a decade of ‘political choices’. In other words: years of government underfunding and unwillingness to invest in staff, hospital buildings and social care infrastructure.

Hospitals have worked hard to reduce the backlog by increasing capacity for elective procedures and paying private hospitals and insourcing and outsourcing agencies to perform additional surgeries.

But the demand for care itself is also increasing, making it even more difficult to clear backlogs. There are many factors behind the increasing demand for elective care in Britain, including the fact that the population is rapidly aging.

Long waiting times for care leave Many people are sicker by the time they are actually seen than if they had been treated earlier. Many patients will have a more acute and complex illness, making their condition more difficult to treat.

Socioeconomic factors, including rising income inequality and a cost-of-living crisis, are likely to make it more difficult for many members of the population to maintain good health.

Consecutive reports health inequalities in Britain have found that health inequalities exist between the richest and the poorest become wider.