Health programme makes waiting lists 'manageable'

The second phase of a plan to reduce waiting lists has brought them down to a "sustainably manageable level" despite missing a planned target, the health and social care minister has said.

Manx Care's £18.3m restoration and recovery programme began in 2022 to increase the number of elective orthopaedic, general surgery and ophthalmology procedures.

However, the health care provider missed its target of 3,796 by 640 procedures across the three specialties between August that year and March this year.

Lawrie Hooper said that there had been "different levels of demand" than forecast, so the health body was "overdelivering" in some cases, but "underdelivering" in others.

'Shorter waiting times'

At the end of the programme, the ophthalmology waiting list had been reduced from 1,794 to 216, orthopaedics was down from 847 to 368, and general surgery had been cut from 515 to 267.

Those reductions meant the average waiting times for the specialties had reduced by 33 weeks, 16 weeks and 28 weeks respectively.

A summary report by the Department of Health and Social Care, which is set to be debated by Tynwald this month, said the "level of activity delivered fell short of the activity planned for in the business case".

But Mr Hooper said the programme had enabled Manx Care to "address the immediate backlogs" and waiting lists would be "significantly smaller with shorter waiting times".

Procedures were carried out by Manx Care clinical teams and UK provider PHL Synaptik, commissioned to work alongside the surgical teams already based at Noble’s Hospital.

Separate funding will need to be approved for the final phase of the programme, which will cover specialties that have not already been targeted, with more information on that set to be put before Tynwald in July.