Fat people and smokers may fill NHS waiting lists due to new software

Obese people and smokers may be placed on NHS waiting lists due to new software that could also lower the priority of middle-class patients.

Dozens of trusts want to adopt a new “agile waiting list” that prioritizes people based on health and risk factors rather than how long they wait.

It could mean that a patient who smokes or is obese may have priority over someone who has been in line for longer, the developers say.

Another example would be for someone from a disadvantaged neighborhood to be expelled from an affluent neighborhood in front of another patient with similar needs.

The computer program was developed by University Hospital Coventry and the Warwickshire Trust, where it is currently being tested.

The trusts are looking for ways to use technology to help back up routine treatment records that emerged during Covid.

Professor Kiran Patel, medical director of the UHCWT, said trusts may evaluate some patients based on “social value judgments”.

Coventry University Hospital (pictured) and Warwickshire Trust developed and testing ‘agile waiting list’

The software, which has attracted interest from around 70 trusts, was featured at an NHS England webinar last month.

It is already used in the Coventry and Warwickshire trust, which covers over a million patients in the Midlands.

But critics have warned that defining “societal values” can be difficult and subjective.

A record 6.5 million people are now lining up for routine care in the UK.

This number is expected to continue to rise for another two years as patients return to the NHS after delays during the pandemic.

Hundreds of thousands of patients have been waiting for over a year, and hospitals are struggling to fulfill the government’s promise to end the two-year waiting period by the end of this month.

Former health minister Sajid Javid, who stepped down on Tuesday on the NHS’s 74th birthday, pledged to digitize healthcare last month, claiming it now operates as “a blockbuster in the Netflix era”.

Professor Patel said NHS England’s current elective care strategy, which prioritizes the tallest waiters, is “fueling up” health inequalities.

He said new agile waiting lists could help “level up.”

Professor Patel explained the software and told the Health Journal (HSJ): ‘You can weigh several factors differently. For example, we have light weight postal codes.

“Even if you have patients who smoke, have high blood pressure, or are overweight, you can use these factors to assess your waiting list position. [potentially pushing these patients forward on the list]†

He said the algorithm could reschedule the waiting list each day, instead of scheduling an 18-week wait for everyone, as is the case with the trust’s current practice.

Professor Patel said long wait times will continue to ‘gain’ on other factors such as weight and wealth.

But he suggested that if there was a difference between 19 weeks and 14 weeks, someone less waiting from a poorer region could be added to the list.

With the current system, more affluent patients wait an average of four weeks shorter for orthopedic surgery, but the new algorithm can make up for that, he said.

But a prominent figure wishing to remain anonymous in another trust warned that trusts with their own ideas about who should have priority could be “in trouble”.

“Most people would expect someone ‘more needy’ to accept it, but we can all have different ideas about how that need is defined,” they said.