Transparency and honesty needed to eradicate NHS backlog
The BMA has said that the government must urgently outline a credible plan for addressing the huge backlog of patients awaiting NHS treatment in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
As we go to press, the doctors’ union has urged the government to be honest about the scale of the task ahead, and to bring together health leaders and staff groups to ensure frontline clinicians are leading discussions on how to prioritise the sickest patients left without treatment due to the redeployment of staff and resources to deal with the coronavirus crisis.
A survey of more than 8,000 doctors found that 52 per cent said they were either not very confident or not confident at all in their own department being able to manage patient demand as NHS services are resumed. These numbers are not promising. Of equal concern, more than a quarter of doctors said there had been no engagement with them over how to manage the increase in demand in their place of work.
The BMA believes that the priorities for the government in addressing the NHS backlog must concentrate on four areas: transparency; capacity; workforce; and learning. A lack of transparency has made this situation worse than it ever should have been, so let’s hope that the government can be honest about
needing to correct that first. Over the next few months, the rest will follow.
Michael Lyons, editor
