Scarborough Hospital waiting lists could take five years to recover after Covid as delays 'top priority' says new chair

The York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust remains in the midst of "a perfect storm" and what looked like a reduction in Covid pressures at the beginning of February "proved to be a false dawn: the community infection rate remains stubbornly high in York and North Yorkshire," Alan Downey said in his first report to the council of governors.

Mr Downey, who took up the role in January, said during a meeting on Tuesday: "The trust is still under tremendous pressure and the infection prevention and control arrangements are almost beginning to get in the way and that’s why it’s appropriate that they should be re-examined."

The current measures require testing of all patients on admission, social distancing and PPE.

But Mr Downey added: "I think it's important that we don’t make this latest wave of Covid an excuse for getting on with other things."

He went on to lay out his top priorities for the months and years ahead.

"One is looking after our staff and we know that many of them are exhausted and frankly, pretty fed up," he said.

"And the other very clear imperative is we've absolutely got to get on top of this backlog of elective work that has built up during the pandemic and we'll be focusing on that relentlessly, not just for months but I think, unfortunately, for years to come."

A report that went before York's health and well-being board yesterday said it could take five years before hospital waiting times recover from the impact of the Covid pandemic.

A report from the Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group shows that in December 2021 there were 1,586 patients waiting more than a year for their treatment at York and Scarborough NHS Foundation Trust.

An NHS directive also says that all trusts should be aiming to eliminate two-year waits by this month, a task the trust's chief executive, Simon Morritt, has previously described as "extremely challenging".

During Tuesday's council of governors meeting, Mr Morritt said senior leaders had questioned Chris Whitty on when hospitals can expect changes on infection control when the chief medical officer visited Scarborough Hospital earlier this month.

Mr Morritt said: "We are expecting some changes in the national guidance in the next two weeks to give us more flexibility to manage risk in a different way and perhaps to see this particular virus a little more like how we might see flu within hospitals.

"At the minute we are really struggling to admit patients because we have so many beds tied up in Covid wards.

"We're hopeful that we will be able to adopt a different approach in the coming weeks that will give us that flexibility. And obviously, we’re hopeful that the prevalence rate will start to fall within society which will make the real change in terms of our overall numbers."