How delays to care during the COVID-19 pandemic have affected people in Calderdale

The waiting game

Since March 2020 we have had a lot of feedback from the public telling us about delays, difficulties and changes in NHS and social care services, due to the Covid-19 pandemic affecting how these services were run. Healthwatch Kirklees and Healthwatch Calderdale worked collaboratively during 2021 to collect the experiences of people living in Calderdale and Kirklees during the Covid-19 pandemic who had experienced delays to health and social care for non-Covid related conditions since March 2020.
NHS Report Delivery Plan For Tackling The Covid-19 Backlog

Covid-19 General Practitioners (GP) Hospitals Council and Clinical Commissioning Groups

We wanted to get a clear picture of how those delays had been impacting on people’s health and wellbeing, and what kind of support they had been able to access. We asked people about the kind of support they would have liked, how effective they had found video and phone appointments, and how they would feel if they were offered NHS treatment further away from home, or at a private hospital (as an NHS patient, if that meant they would be seen sooner).

We also took the opportunity to ask whether people would seek medical help for a serious or worsening condition during the pandemic, if they could change one thing about the NHS what that would be and finally, we asked people to tell us one thing they needed to help improve their health and wellbeing.


Report 07/02/22	Download File (pdf 836.31 KB)

Access to services - people reported having difficulties making appointments to see GPs face-to-face, not receiving expected follow-up care or diagnostic tests in a timely manner and delays in accessing specialist services.

Related Reports

Delays to Medication

Here at Healthwatch Calderdale, we have recently completed our latest work into people’s experiences of accessing medication.

This project was prompted by our initial engagement into people’s experiences of Covid-19, with over 200 people telling us they had some challenges accessing medication.
We have further explored 3 areas:

Changes to medication;
Medication reviews;
Support of others to obtain medication.

Covid-19

Health experiences in Calderdale during Covid-19

To gather a full understanding of the experience of health and care services during the Covid-19 outbreak, over a period over of 12 weeks (end of May to end of August 2020) Healthwatch Calderdale and partners used a variety of different engagement approaches and tools including a survey and virtual focus groups to talk to people living and working in Calderdale.

Covid-19

Hypermobility syndromes

Healthwatch Calderdale has now published its Hypermobility Syndromes report. We had over 250 responses to the survey, thank you to everybody who took part.

The purpose of our project was to collect the voices of adults with hypermobility syndromes in Yorkshire and the Humber in order to develop an understanding of their health and social care experiences. There was also an opportunity for participants to tell us anything else that they felt was relevant to their experience of their condition.

National work