The NHS has significantly expanded its workforce in recent years, yet patients continue to face historically long waits for planned surgery. A new study finds that staff sickness absence and instability in administrative teams – not workforce size per se – as key factors, researchers report in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine today.
The study, by researchers from the University of Oxford, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh, and Brunel University of London, found that elective surgery waiting lists rose almost threefold from 2.6 million in 2013 to 7.7 million by early 2024. While the list has since fallen from its peak, it remains historically high.¹
Despite the addition of roughly 250,000 full-time equivalent staff between 2018 and 2023, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)-supported research shows the average number of completed procedures per clinical staff member fell by around four per cent between 2018 and 2023, equivalent to roughly 3 fewer procedures per clinician per year, depending on specialty.
"You'd think that more staff should mean more patients treated, but that's not what the data show," said Associate Professor Catia Nicodemo, a health economist at the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and Brunel University of London. "When doctors are off sick and there aren't enough administrators to schedule operations and process referrals, the system slows down regardless of headcount."
Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences website.