NHS Waiting Lists Rise after Doctors' Hours Cut

America, if you want to know what ObmaaCare will be like, look no further than across the pond in England at their national health care system.

Patients there have to wait weeks for surgeries and its only getting worse.

Can you say, “We’re screwed!”



UK Telegraph

Hospital waiting times have begun to rise again after years of decline following the introduction of European rules on junior doctors' working hours

Waiting times in the NHS had been dropping since the 1990s but the rules limiting junior doctors to a 48-hour week, which were implemented last August, had reversed the trend. Thousands more patients were now waiting longer than 18 weeks for surgery.

Ministers were seeking to renegotiate Britain’s position on the European Working Time Directive, including a possible opt-out for NHS staff.

The Royal College of Surgeons carried out the first comprehensive analysis of how the directive had affected waiting times.

According to the research, the proportion of NHS patients having to wait longer than the 18-week target for non-emergency surgery such as hip replacements had almost doubled from 1.5 per cent 18 months ago to nearly three per cent in March this year.

Waiting times reached an all-time low at the end of 2008, with patients waiting just a few weeks for surgery on average.
However, since the EU directive cut junior doctors’ hours from 56 to 48 per week, these gains had been wiped out, the Royal College said.

According to data from the Department of Health, the number of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks — from GP referral to being treated as an inpatient — fell steadily from April 2007, when almost 34,000 people were waiting, to 8,674 in December 2008.

The figure remained stable at about 10,000 until June 2009, just before the new rules came in, when the rise began.

In March this year, it had risen to 17,515, a level last seen in September 2007.

John Black, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said the increase was predictable.

“If you have the same number of patients, no more doctors and ask them to work less then it is inevitable that the time available for elective procedures will reduce and waiting lists grow,” he said.

Almost two thirds of consultants now frequently operated without assistants because departments were so stretched.

Mr Black said most European countries had bypassed the legislation by either not monitoring compliance or, as in Germany and Holland, finding ways around the directive.

“We look forward to this happening in the UK,” he said.
Sir Richard Thompson, the new president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the directive had been a “complete disaster” for both patient care and the quality of training for doctors.

“We are not providing the service or the training that we require,” he said.

“I cannot overemphasise the damage to service provision and to training.”
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