Trust given £460k for slashing waiting lists

3 hours ago

David TooleyLocal Democracy Reporter

Ned Hobbs, chief operating officer of the hospital trust, said it had helped to reduce backlogs while ensuring waiting lists more accurately reflected true demand

Ellen Knight/BBC A smiling man with a bald head and glasses in a white shirt with a blue lanyard in a room with white walls and a blue curtain — Ned Hobbs, chief operating officer of the hospital trust, said it had helped to reduce backlogs while ensuring waiting lists more accurately reflected true demand

A hospital trust has received more than £460,000 for removing tens of thousands of patients from waiting lists.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) took part in three government-sponsored "validation sprint" exercises which happened in April 2025, July to September 2025, and January to March 2026.

The exercises "cleanse" English-only waiting lists by identifying patients who no longer required care or by removing duplicate entries.

Ned Hobbs, SaTH's chief operating officer and deputy chief executive, said 14,148 patients were removed, and trusts were incentivised through a payment of £33 per validated removal, called a clock stop.

He said it was a time-limited exercise that helped "reduce backlogs while ensuring waiting lists more accurately reflected true demand."

He added that the trust had recently moved from one data system to another and had some "legacy data issues that had artificially inflated our waiting list."

At a board meeting in March, campaigner Gill George, of Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin Defend Our NHS, asked what support was given to patients who wanted to challenge or correct a wrong removal from the list.

Hobbs said patients were able to discuss the issue with their GP.

SaTH was required to have at least 60% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks by March 2026.

According to the latest data, it was at 63.1% in February 2026, up from 48.5% in November 2024, NHS England's starting point for the data.

Trusts began officially working on the targets in April 2025. Data for March 2026 will be released in May.

In February, the trust said improvements in waiting lists for planned surgery had been largely helped by a £24m, purpose-built elective surgery hub, which opened in Telford in 2024.

At the time, Hobbs told the BBC that the the three biggest changes the trust had implemented were "improvements to outpatient services, our operating theatres, and our diagnostics".

In December 2024, the trust was awarded £2m to improve services as a reward for cutting waiting times.

It said its overall waiting list had reduced by 10,000 and the number of children waiting for treatment had fallen by 40%.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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