The boss of Manx Care has vowed to cut hospital waiting times as it emerged people with a range of conditions are having to wait nearly five years for their first appointment.

Teresa Cope admitted the situation was unacceptable.

But she said Covid had a ’significant impact’ on health services over the last 12 months.

And she acknowledged that people’s fear of going to hospital had caused thousands of appointments to be wasted.

Now she and her team are working to improve the situation.

According to figures released in Tynwald, more than 3,300 people are currently waiting for a cardiology referral with a maximum waiting time for a first appointment of 880 days or 2.4 years.

Those waiting for endocrinology conditions face a longer wait of 4.7 years or 1,751 days for a first appointment with a consultant in hospital.

In gastroenterology it is up to 1,582 days or 4.3 years and in ophthalmology, for nearly 7,000 people, it can be a wait of 1,336 days or 3.6 years.

Mrs Cope told the Manx Independent: ’It is a very difficult position and an unacceptable length of waiting time for patients when they are in pain or anxious.

’But I also think that there has been quite a significant impact because of Covid over the last 12 months.

’But I have also identified here in the island that the longest wait position is not always particularly accurate and you are better off looking at what the average wait is.’

She said that there could be all sorts of reasons for the high maximum time waiting for a first appointment. Mrs Cope is the chief executive of Manx Care, a new statutory body designed to operate at arm’s length from the Department of Health and Social Care, and focused on the delivery of services to the public.

She said: ’I think we can make significant inroads into that waiting list position over the next 12 months both by doing the validation and making sure we have really accurate waiting lists information and by bringing in new policies and procedures, looking at how we manage waiting lists but also by doing extra work and responding to those waiting list pressures.’

make sure

Mrs Cope said: ’We want to make sure nobody waits longer than a year.

’That’s what we are committed to and we have made explicit statements around that in our required outcomes framework.

’Even a year feels like a long time but those are the sorts of standards that are comparable with other countries who are dealing with the aftermath of Covid and responding to waiting lists pressures.’

There has been a media report that Manx Care is seeking more money from Treasury to fund its battle to bring waiting lists down.

When the Manx Independent asked about this, a Manx Care spokesman said: ’As part of Manx Care’s restoration and recovery planning following Covid, we are developing plans for each service to reduce its waiting lists.

’Plans for how this will be achieved will be shared with the DHSC (Department for Health and Social Care) in due course.’

Meanwhile, Mrs Cope, who was previously chief operating officer in the Hull and East Riding Hospitals Trust, said that during the first wave of Covid ’a lot of people who really should have come to hospital didn’t. It was the same when I was in the UK and it is the same here.’

She added: ’We need to build that confidence back with the public that our hospital is safe.

’We need to encourage people that need to come to hospital to come.

’We are taking all the steps to ensure that our health and care facilities have all the right precautions that people are safe to return.’

Mrs Cope said it was ’quite staggering’ how many appointments were being wasted because of people not turning up for appointments.

She said wasting appointments was not going to help them get the waiting list ’back on track’.

She revealed that last year just under 10,000 appointments for outpatient were not attended.

’That’s a lot of wasted capacity, that’s 9,800 appointments that were wasted.

’When somebody does not attend you don’t have another patient that you can put in.

’That’s a big number and what we have to do at Manx Care is build a different relationship with the population.

’We want them to understand that we are here to support them and we have their best interests at the forefront of our minds and we want to provide the best level of care.

’We want to assure them that our facilities are safe and we want them to understand how we will run our services in the post-Covid world.

’And this includes how we are planning to get ourselves back into a better position regarding our waiting lists.’

The breakdown of waiting list numbers for a first consultant outpatient appointment were provided after a question from Onchan MHK Julie Edge in April’s Tynwald.