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Inpatient waiting lists at the Hospital have returned to pre-pandemic levels, but outpatients will still face longer waits for clinics until at least the end of the year, the civil servant in charge of Health has said.
At a Scrutiny hearing this week, Health Director General Caroline Landon said: “We’ve been doing a lot of work around our waiting lists: our inpatient waiting list is down to pre-pandemic levels, in fact it has reduced slightly.
“We have done some great work around cardiology and orthopaedics.”
However, she added: “Our outpatient wait is still not where we need it to be; in fact, it has increased.
“A lot of that is due to the fact that we didn’t have frontline GP services for a long time in the pandemic. Therefore, we had a backlog in referrals coming through, so we’re having to catch up.
“The work that we have ongoing is putting on additional clinics, maximising our utilisation rate in theatres and ensuring that we are constantly reviewing our conversion rates.
Mrs Landon said that Health was looking to significantly reduce inpatient waiting lists across all main surgeries by September.
However, she added: “Our outpatient wait is a bit trickier and we don’t think we’ll get back on top of until probably the end of this year or beginning of next year.”
Pictured: Mrs Landon said that theatre utilisation was currently 68-70%, which was good in a pandemic but the aim was to get it to 80%.
“Our trajectory around improvement could also be impacted by another wave, and we are challenged on a daily basis – today, for instance, we have 62 staff off with covid.”
At the end of last year, which is the latest data published on gov.je, there were 9,471 patient referrals waiting for their first outpatients appointment. This was down on the 10,035 patients on 19 October, the high point of the second half of last year.
On 31 December, 179 patients were wating for cardiology outpatient appointment, the most over the half-year period. The number of people waiting to visit dermatology, endocrinology, neurology and orthodontic outpatient clinics also climbed towards the end of the year.
However, the number of people waiting for other clinics, including trauma and orthopaedics, physiotherapy and paediatrics, fell over the period.
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