Doncaster hospitals drive-through cardiac service 'cuts' waiting list

Cardiac patients are allowed to collect monitors and get advice through their car window when they drive to Doncaster Royal Infirmary

A drive-through service for patients to fit their own heart monitoring devices has cut an NHS waiting list by nearly 90%, a trust has said.

Cardiac patients can collect monitors, with advice on fitting them, through their car windows when they drive to hospitals in Doncaster or Mexborough.

The hospitals' NHS trust said there were 1,400 patients on its waiting list when the service started in July 2020.

But that figure had dropped down to 148 as of 2 August, it said.

Normally patients book hospital appointments to have the equipment fitted and checked regularly.

But the new service meant more cardiac patients could be seen face-to-face at Doncaster Royal Infirmary or Montagu Hospital, with a hundred patients a week using the drive-through, Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said.

Chief cardiac physiologist Sarah Ritzmann said: "We've assessed quite carefully the quality of their recordings for these devices and assessed them against a group of face-to-face patients that were seen at another site, and we found no difference in the quality of the ECG recordings between the two groups of patients."

Last week Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the government would look at "what more we need to do" for the NHS after figures showed more than 5.45 million patients are waiting for hospital treatment in England.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies warned of a huge hidden backlog of patients who are yet to come forward for treatment, suggesting up to 14 million people could be on NHS waiting lists in England by next autumn.

The government pointed to the £1bn it had given to the NHS this year to clear the backlog.