'Significant number of delays' predicted by George Eliot boss

The boss of George Eliot hospital has warned that some people could be waiting years for certain non-urgent operations due to the long-term impact of the coronavirus.

David Eltringham, managing director of the George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton, said it would be a balancing act tackling the backlog while looking after the wellbeing of doctors and nurses.

He told members of Warwickshire County Council's adult social care and health overview and scrutiny committee at their meeting this week: "There is no question that there are a significant number of delays in surgical pathways throughout this wave of Covid-19.

"We continue to operate on our highest priority patients – those with cancer and those requiring emergency or urgent surgical intervention. We have a larger number than we would like who have waited longer than a year for routine operations and the size of the waiting list is growing.

"We are looking at bringing work back online assuming the situation continues to improve but we have to balance that with our need to look after our staff. Many of our theatre staff have been redeployed through the pandemic to look after patients who have ICU or high dependency needs so we are carefully trying to balance resting staff and bringing work back online.

"It isn't a quick fix and it is going to take us some considerable time to recover the situation. We are probably talking many months and possibly years before we are back in a stable position from an elective waiting list perspective."

Mr Eltringham explained that the George Eliot Hospital was in a better position than most as it expects to have a suite of new £4m operating theatres open later this year.

He added: "Our assessment is that the waiting list has grown so much that even with the additional capacity that we've got coming on line it will take that length of time. It's not just something that we will experience at the George Eliot Hospital – it will be a problem nationally.

"There are a number of specialties that are in a worse position than others – an area of particular concern is trauma and orthopedics. The addition of the two new operating theatres on site will help us to deal with that but it probably will still result in some very long waits for people."