Some 85% of NHS trust leaders say they are more concerned about this winter than any previous one during their career.
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The figure comes from a poll of health trust leaders for NHS Providers as waiting lists in England continue to reach record levels and cancer targets are routinely being missed.
Some 48% of trust leaders rated the quality of healthcare provided by their local area as very high or high, while just 30% predicted that it would reach that standard in two years' time.
Nearly half (46%) strongly agreed or agreed they were on track to meet elective recovery and cancer targets by the end of the financial year.
And a further 27% neither agreed or disagreed, while a quarter (24%) disagreed or strongly disagreed they could hit the targets, which were put in place after the pandemic.
Saffron Cordery, the organisation's interim chief executive, said: "Alarm bells should be ringing across Whitehall with warnings from our trust leaders that less than half now expect to meet key end of year elective recovery and cancer targets."
Just 61.7% of people get cancer treatment within 62 days of an urgent cancer referral, compared with 77.2% before the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Every day’ Greater Manchester hospitals are packed with 1,000 patients who are medically allowed to be discharged but cannot be, NHS bosses have revealed. Coupled with high numbers of people in hospital beds with Covid-19, hospital bed numbers are being perilously squeezed, they warn.
The figures come as NHS bosses admit that ‘all parts of the health and care system are under significant pressure’ as it heads into its most challenging period of the year - winter. Greater Manchester health chiefs say they are spending millions on trying to discharge people from hospital before a cold snap begins.
The Manchester Evening News has previously reported that, over the course of the last year, the region’s NHS has regularly experienced this level of patients well enough to go home, but unable to be discharged. As they wait to go home, NHS medics tell the M.E.N. patients are likely to deteriorate in other ways, making them more likely to have to come back into hospital in future and creating a revolving door of admissions.
“We know that on any given day, we have around 1,000 in a hospital bed who are ready to go home. And for one reason or another, those patients do not go home on the day that they are ready to go home,†Steve Dixon, the chief delivery officer for Greater Manchester NHS, told a joint health scrutiny committee on Wednesday November 9.
“There is a significant amount of work and effort around discharge and flow, that includes working with social care, voluntary sector, families, working with the care home and domiciliary care - but a main focus on discharge and flow.
“At the same time as seeing, treating and caring for people with their urgent pressures, we are still trying to maintain and clear the waiting lists and the backlog at the same time. Underpinning all of this is the challenge around workforce and the number of vacancies that we’ve currently got across health and care." ■