Short staffing due to Covid is being blamed for long surgery waiting lists in orthopaedics while gastroenterology procedures had to be cut back while the virus was active.

The Key Performance Indicators for the contract between Health and Social Care and The Medical Specialist Group show that a significant number of targets are being missed.

KPIs are part of the contract that forms Guernsey's secondary health care model, which means medical appointments and procedures not involving  a GP.

The report for 2022 shows that all of the waiting times targets were missed.

People are waiting the longest for orthopaedic surgery, bone and joint operations, and for gastroenterology, which is an investigation in to the upper digestive system, using a specialist mini camera.

Dr Steve Evans, the chair of the MSG, says reducing these times is their key target:

"Waiting times are our number one priority. It's not acceptable that people are waiting as long as they are. It's frustrating when you know there are patients out there waiting to be seen, worrying about what's wrong with them, and you can't see them."

"We realise how stressful that is and we are trying to deal with it."

Dr Peter Rabey is the medical director for Health and Social Care. He says long waiting times affect people badly:

"They're waiting for a diagnosis, they're waiting for a treatment. Some of them are living with pain, in their joints for example, and it's absolutely key that we get these waiting times back down."

Dr Rabey says the new dedicated de Havilland ward is helping to reduce the list for bone and joint operations:

"Their operations are protected for planned surgery. There are no emergency admissions on this ward. This is a first for us and, since we opened the ward in October, we're not cancelling patients for their operations and we're starting to see the waiting lists in orthopaedics coming down again."

"But it's going to be a long time before we get back to the levels of March 2020." 

The De Havilland Unit opened on 10 October 2022 to tackle the big backlog of islanders waiting for hip and knee replacements.

Dr Rabey says there's a new plan which will be initiated shortly to tackle gastroenterology waiting lists. Only a few could be done during Covid because of the need to clean theatres down entirely between patients.

"We're getting some people over from the UK to use our facilities in the PEH and work long weekends and do lots of endoscopies in a row and get this waiting time back down to where it used to be before the pandemic. We hope to start this by early spring."

Both Dr Rabey and Dr Evans say the KPI report has plenty of good news.

Hospital acquired infections are low and MRI and radiology waiting lists are reducing. Emergency department waiting times are close to target but then Guernsey's A&E department isn't busy, when compared to the UK.

Bed blocking is an issue. Almost 1 in 5 hospital beds are occupied by someone who could be at home or in a nursing or care home. Dr Rabey says this isn't easy to fix:

"What we need more of are care home and nursing home beds and that's an island wide problem that's going to be a difficult one to fix."

He doesn't agree that the KPIs are set too high and sees them as an important set of standards to aspire to:

"We believe the targets are right and we have to work even harder to get those down to where we want them to be."