Leeds Children's Hospital puts on weekend operations as NHS backlog across nation grows

Leeds Children’s Hospital will be working alongside other children’s hospitals to offer additional clinics and extra surgery slots on a day dubbed “Super Saturday.”

Some eight extra operations have been planned alongside 42 outpatient appointments.

It’s the third such intervention planned in the space of a year at the hospital, with other specialist centres including Great Ormond Street, Alder Hey, Sheffield, and Evelina London also putting on more services this weekend.

Suzanne Abrahams, hospital manager, said: “Through Super Saturdays we have been able to see hundreds more children with extra appointments and surgeries taking place across the country. As well as helping to reduce waiting lists, Super Saturdays allow our teams to be innovative and progressive in the way in which they deliver care.

For example on previous Super Saturdays we have been able to use Virtual Reality Distraction Therapy (VRDT) for patients undergoing minor surgical procedures removing the need for general anaesthetic, we have delivered Play Specialist-led bloods clinics to reduce anxiety and we have taken clinics out into the community to improve accessibility for families in Leeds.”

It comes as data from NHS England shows the health service struggling to keep up with demand, with people facing long waits for key tests, some cancer checks, and routine and emergency care.

The number of people in England waiting to start hospital treatment rose to 7.1 million at the end of September, up from 7 million in August and the highest figure since records began in August 2007.

Meanwhile, 401,537 people have been waiting longer than a year to start hospital treatment, up from 387,257 at the end of August and equivalent to around one in 18 people on the entire waiting list.

Very long waits of more than two years have fallen slightly, while the number of people waiting 18 months for treatment has dropped by almost 60 per cent in one year, NHS England said.

The number waiting at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission also reached a new peak of 150,922 in October, up from 131,861 the previous month.

A total of 69.3 per cent of patients in England were seen within four hours in A&Es last month, the worst performance on record and the first time it has dropped below 70 per cent.

The operational standard is that at least 95 per cent of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours, but this has not been met nationally since 2015.

Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “This latest set of performance data show that standards are at an unacceptably poor level for both patients and staff with an expectation that this will deteriorate further over the winter months.

“Pressures are at unsustainable levels and the results are scant justice for acute care staff who continue to strive to deliver a reasonable quality of care.”