MORE than 1,000 patients were added to the waiting list for routine treatment at York hospital trust in December, new figures show.

The data from NHS England shows that 36,892 patients were waiting for non-urgent elective operations or treatment at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust at the end of December – up from 35,866 the month before.

December’s figure was also 32 per cent more than a year earlier, when there were 28,034 patients on the waiting list.

But, the median waiting time from referral to treatment was 12 weeks in December, the same length as a year earlier. This meant 64 per cent of patients started treatment within the NHS’s target time of 18 weeks – slightly lower than November, when 65 per cent of patients began treatment on time.

A spokesperson for the York trust - which runs York Hospital and Scarborough Hospital, said the team was working hard to plan and reinstate its normal services, but the Covid-19 pandemic continued to affect the services it delivers and how it delivers them.

They said: “The safety measures we have to follow, for example social distancing in clinics and on wards and enhanced cleaning and hygiene procedures, mean we can see fewer patients and carry out fewer operations in a single day than we could before Covid. This, coupled with the backlog created across the NHS by pausing many of our services in the first few months of the pandemic, means that we will see some long waits.

“However, we are making headway and we have already reduced the number of patients waiting 52 weeks or longer at the end of January 2022, by 37 per cent, when compared to the peak at the end of February 2021.

“Additionally, while the number of patients waiting to be seen has increased nationally as well as locally, these figures show the trust’s median waiting time from referral to treatment remained the same in December 2021, when compared to December 2020.”

Separate NHS figures show that the York trust breached its cancer waiting time target in December.

Trusts must tell at least 75per cent of those urgently referred for a cancer check, whether they have the disease within 28 days - and the figures show that the trust fell below that target, with 74 per cent of patients being told the outcome on time in December.

Across England, 6.07 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of December – up from six million in November and the highest number since records began in 2007.

Measures announced by the Government to tackle issues within the health service include prioritising diagnosis and treatment, increasing activity through dedicated surgical hubs and hiring 15,000 more care workers by the end of March.