WORK to bring down waiting lists at Princess Alexandra Hospital has been described as “mission critical” by senior leadership reports the Local Democracy Reporter.

The warnings come after Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow was rated 120th out of 134 Trusts in NHSE’s recently introduced ‘National Oversight Framework (NOF) which assesses the performance of integrated care boards, NHS trusts and foundation trusts.

Among the services which caused significant alarm among PAH bosses was its cancer services – one of the worst in the country. The percentage of patients treated for cancer within 62 days from the original referral was 48 per cent at the time of the NOF rating even though the national target is at 75 per cent.

It has since gone up to 62 per cent – still below target – after it commissioned two external reviews into cancer care and is now undertaking targeted work, in particular tumour groups, to improve access to diagnostics, clinical decision and treatment.

Planned care, sometimes known as elective care, covers all referrals into the hospital for assessment where it is not urgent or emergency, where there is time to ‘plan’ the appointment in. The national target for 2025/26 is that 65 per cent of patients referred in on ‘elective pathways’ should receive treatment within 18 weeks of referral.

There is also a target that by March 2026, only one per cent of all patients should be waiting over 52 weeks for their treatment. At PAH the percentage of cases where a patient is waiting 18 weeks or less for elective treatment was 51.14%at the time of the NOF rating – although it has gone up to 54 per cent.

The number of patients waiting over 52 weeks for elective treatment was 4.68 per cent is now five per cent. They say they are working hard to bring down the numbers of patients waiting over 52 weeks for treatment. PAH’s target is to be at one per cent by March 2026.

Anna Jebb, Chief Operating Officer, told a Health Overview Policy and Scrutiny Committee on November 27: “Patients know if they are waiting a long amount of time. What you want is to give people confidence so if they’ve got something urgent they’re going to get seen quickly.

“We absolutely have got to drive to completely change the position over the next year. I am hopeful in a year’s time people will see the improvements and have that confidence. I can see at the moment it must be anxiety provoking.

“We do respond immediately and we also triangulate things so we know that a large proportion of our complaints relate to patients on waiting lists. It’s Mission Critical now to shorten the waiting lists to make sure people are seen quicker.”