Soaring wait times and crisis-level pressure have hit hospitals across South Yorkshire. 

By September 2023, nearly 80,000 patients were awaiting elective surgery in Sheffield alone.

Doncaster Royal Infirmary reported more than 6,800 patients have waited more than 12 hours for A&E in 2023.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust’s A&E wait times rose to the highest level in six years.

Kevin Hunt was admitted into Doncaster Royal Infirmary in June 2023 after suffering a life-threatening heart attack.

Mr Hunt waited around 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, before being taken to Doncaster hospital.

Mr Hunt said: “They asked me to walk to the waiting room from the ambulance park- all while I was in the middle of a heart attack- because they needed the ambulance back for another call.

“I was terrified. I was having a heart attack and it felt like I wasn’t taken seriously from the start.”

After being left in the waiting room for close to an hour, he was eventually admitted to a ward as part of the emergency department.

Mr Hunt said: “The A&E side was terrible, and then I was left waiting three days on the ward for my operation. 

“It felt like a joke.”

Mr Hunt suffers from severe anxiety and as a result of his experience has since developed a fear of hospitals.

Although he initially did not receive much help in A&E, Mr Hunt has since praised the staff for how helpful they were to him while awaiting surgery.

The NHS Constitution’s promise is that at least 95% of patients will wait no more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged from hospital.

However, 2023 saw more than 20,000 patients in Sheffield A&E waiting well over this period just to be seen.

Yorkshire Nurse, Courtney Davey, 26, said: “NHS staff are working tirelessly to manage growing demand, but the system is under unprecedented strain. 

“We are treating more patients than ever before with fewer resources, making it increasingly difficult to maintain the level of care patients need.”

Madeleine Lake, 24, a hospitality worker from Sheffield, said she arrived at Northern General Hospital in 2023 with severe abdominal pain and was kept overnight for monitoring.

Miss Lake said: “The lack of care and communication was appalling, the doctors didn’t see me for over 13 hours.

“I wasn’t told whether I would need surgery or what my treatment plan was, it was awful.”

In Rotherham, wait times for elective surgeries saw patients waiting an average of 43 weeks last year, up from just 10 weeks in 2018.

Emma Carter, 32, a teacher from Rotherham, described her 30-week wait for surgery as unbearable.

Miss Carter said: “The pain was bad enough, but the uncertainty worsened it. I had to stop coaching netball and even take time off work.

“Every time I called, I was told to just ‘hold on’. No one should have to wait that long to get their life back.”

Elective surgeries in Sheffield have seen some of the most dramatic increases in wait times, with the average wait growing from 55 days in 2018 to 168 days in 2023—more than tripling over just five years.

Over 55,800 patients endured waits longer than 18 weeks for an outpatient appointment from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals in 2023, over 6 times higher than it was in 2018.

In 2023, Rotherham patients waited an average of 12 weeks for appointments, while Doncaster patients waited an average of 10 weeks.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly worsened these delays, with many services still struggling to recover from the disruptions of 2020 and 2021, according to the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Trust.

Whilst the NHS England budget is increasing to £192 billion in 2025/26 to help fund pay deals and other immediate cost pressures, the budget across the NHS in South Yorkshire was exceeded by about 1.5% with a year-end deficit of £48.3m in 2023, leaving more challenges still to address.

These struggles come at the same time that The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspected Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals in August and September 2023.

They were downgraded from “good” to “requires improvement” due to overcrowding concerns and reports of insufficient staffing.

The trust’s chief executive Richard Parker said at the time that while the change of the rating was disappointing, it was not surprising and that they were clear of their current positions and the steps needed to get back to the level they were at a few years ago.

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