Hit squads were yesterday ordered in to seven English hospital trusts "named and shamed" after a sharp rise in outpatient waiting lists left the government embarrassed. The action teams will pay their first visits this week to draw up "recovery plans" to reduce queues for treatment, which have lengthened despite Tony Blair's pledge to improve the NHS.
New figures showed the number of patients waiting more than 13 weeks to be assessed rose nearly 43,000 during the three months to June to 444,000.
The increase overshadowed a 5,000 fall in outpatients forced to wait a year or longer for treatment, the figure targeted in Labour's election manifesto.
The figures appeared to vindicate claims by doctors' leaders and opposition politicians that ministers had extended queues to meet overstretched consultants to cut in-patient waiting lists.
Staff from the government's national patient access team are to visit all seven hospital trusts within the next few days to start compiling proposals to deliver the "dramatic improvements" over the next six months promised by the government.
Lord Hunt, a health minister who used to speak on behalf of health authorities, said: "The public's top concern about the NHS is waiting for treatment. The outpatients rise has to be tackled with immediate action. This increase is far too high."
The seven trusts on the hit list are Aintree Hospitals, Dudley Group of Hospitals, Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals, Leeds Teaching Hospitals, Plymouth Hospitals, Southend Hospital, and Worcester NHS Trust.
Plymouth Hospitals Trust, based at the city's Derriford hospital, was recently found to have fiddled outpatient lists, forcing the resignations of its deputy and chief executives.
The 10% rise to 444,000 in the number enduring waits of beyond three months to see an NHS specialist left ministers attempting to convince the public that they could cure the health service.
Lord Hunt said a quarter of the increase was in the seven named trusts out of 400 operating in England and Wales.
Mr Blair earlier this month announced a radical restructuring of the health service, including treatment within three months by 2005 backed up by a private hospital guarantee, after the chancellor, Gordon Brown, vowed spending would go up £12bn over three years.
Lord Hunt said £40m an nounced earlier would be used to cut waiting lists, broken down to £13m for trusts with spare capacity to treat patients from other areas and £27m for departments with long waiting lists.
The extra expenditure on outpatients will be controlled by Whitehall to stop trusts wasting the money.
Other figures revealed by ministers showed 1,047,900 waiting for treatment in hospitals in England, a fall of 5,000. The total has fallen by more than the 100,000 drop Mr Blair committed himself to after inheriting 1,158,000 from the Tories.
Philip Hammond, a Tory health spokesman, said: "Morale is at an all time low and naming and shaming and sending in hit squads is the opposite of good management."
A spokesman for the Patients Association said: "It is the waiting times that we and patients are really concerned about. It is unacceptable that people are waiting so long to see a consultant after being referred by their GP."
Plymouth is recruiting 36 nurses from the Philippines to help clear the backlog, and John Yarnold, acting director of operations, said: "We have a recovery plan in place to be back on course with waiting list targets by the end of September."
He added: "The number of people waiting more than 13 weeks for an outpatients appointment has already started to fall."
