THE number of patients waiting more than a year for routine hospital treatment in Bournemouth and Poole has rocketed to a record high, new figures reveal.

The King's Fund think tank says there is a “mountain to climb” to tackle delays caused by Covid-19, after NHS data showed more than 100,000 people across England had been waiting at least a year for non-urgent care – the most for more than a decade.

NHS statistics show 956 patients had been on the waiting list for 52 weeks or more for elective operations or treatment at the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust at the end of August.

This was the highest figure for the month since comparable local records began in 2011 – the previous August, just three patients had been delayed as long.

At Poole Hospitals there were 1,093 waiting more than a year.

According to NHS rules, patients referred for non-urgent consultant-led elective care should start treatment within 18 weeks.

Across England, the number of people waiting a year or more hit 111,000, a near tenfold increase from 1,236 in August 2019 and the highest figure since 2008.

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at The King’s Fund, said: “NHS staff are working hard to restore services and find innovative new ways to care for patients, but as these figures show, there is a mountain to climb before waits for routine NHS care return to pre-pandemic levels.

“It now seems unlikely that the highly ambitious targets set for the recovery of NHS performance over autumn will be met, and it is important to be honest with patients and the public about how long people are likely to have to wait for care.”

A combination of the huge treatment backlog, rising Covid-19 hospital admissions, an expected winter surge in demand on services and exhausted and overstretched staff means NHS leaders are “braced for a torrid winter”, he added.

“Much will therefore depend on whether the Government can deliver increased capacity and improvements to the testing system to enable NHS and social care staff to be regularly tested for Covid.”

Of the 26,878 patients waiting for treatment at the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals Trust at the end of August, 54 per cent had been doing so for more than the 18-week window.

Around 45 per cent of the 14,282 at Poole had been waiting more than 18 weeks.

NHS trusts are expected to make sure no more than eight per cent of patients are left waiting beyond the 18-week maximum target.

Nationally, 46 per cent of the 4.2 million people waiting at the end of the month had overshot the target time, although this an improvement on 53 per cent in July.

Chief medical officer at University Hospitals Dorset, Alyson O’Donnell, said: “We know how difficult it is to be waiting for a procedure or operation and we’re working tirelessly to ensure we can see our patients safely.

"Our clinicians have been looking at all our patients who have been waiting to ensure those who have been waiting the longest are brought in and to avoid our patients suffering additional risk while they wait to be seen. None of us would want this for our friends and families so please be assured this is a top priority.

"We are also balancing how we can see as many patients as possible when the demand for beds is increasing and the numbers of Covid cases are rising across the country.”