More than 40% of patients feel their health deteriorated while waiting to be admitted to hospital, a new survey has found.
The CQC’s annual survey, which received more than 63,500 responses, found that patient satisfaction with hospital services is largely unchanged since 2022, but remains ‘significantly worse than pre-pandemic’.
There is a ‘continued frustration’ at waiting times, with 42% of respondents who were in hospital for elective care in 2023 saying they would like to have been admitted sooner.
Of the 16,800 respondents whose hospital admission was from a waiting list, 43% said their ‘health deteriorated while waiting to be admitted’, which is up from 41% in 2022.
A quarter said their condition ‘got a bit worse’ while just under a fifth said it ‘got much worse’.
Last year, the CQC’s former chief executive officer said that hospital backlogs are creating ‘avoidable’ extra workload for GPs, who are having to manage these patients for longer than both the patient and the GP would like.
Recent BMA analysis suggested that the NHS waiting list stood at 7.6 million cases in June 2024, and last year the Health Foundation predicted that the elective backlog could reach 8 million by this summer if trends continued, regardless of strike action.
Almost half of respondents to the survey said they ‘definitely’ received enough support from health and social care services after hospital to help manage their condition – but a quarter (24%) said they did not.
The CQC’s survey, which has been running since 2002, was answered by patients who stayed in one of 131 acute specialist NHS trusts in England for at least one night during November 2023.
People who were considered frail reported poorer than average experiences for all the questions in the survey, while older people, male respondents and those who only stayed in hospital for one night generally reported better experiences.
CQC director of secondary and specialist healthcare Nicola Wise said it is ‘concerning’ that there has been a rise in the number of people who felt their health deteriorated while waiting for elective care.
She said this is ‘further evidence that the current imbalance between patient demand and treatment capacity is putting people at risk’.
Ms Wise also said: ‘It’s disappointing that we haven’t seen more improvement in patient experience since the last time the survey was carried out.
‘Overall, satisfaction rates remain far lower than they were pre-Covid with delays in accessing care and poorly coordinated discharge from hospital both clear factors impacting on the quality of people’s hospital stay.’
A recent survey across 10 high-income countries found that the UK performs the worst on hospital waiting lists, with 11% of people surveyed waiting a year or more for a specialist appointment, compared to 1% in the Netherlands.
Ahead of the general election in July, the Labour Party pledged to eradicate elective waits over 18 weeks within five years.
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