THE Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals will benefit from a cash injection of almost £1million to help clear a backlog of patients waiting for surgery.

Extra ‘capacity’ will be created with the funds, which could mean doctors and nurses being paid more to treat non-urgent patients during the evenings and weekends.

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The government cash will be targeted at patients who have been waiting well over the 18-week target for a planned procedure, such as a hip or knee replacement.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust is meeting the overall 18-week referral-to-treatment target, with 90 per cent of patients treated within the time frame, but there are concerns about the performance within individual departments.

The Ear, Nose and Throat specialism is “a future risk due to the increasing backlog”, according to trust board papers, while urology and oral surgery also have large backlogs.

The failure to meet the key emergency department target resulted in financial penalties of about £100,000 locally during August.

The funds will be handed to East Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen clinical commissioning groups, which fund the hospitals, and will also be used for those patients due to be treated in hospitals outside East Lancashire.

Mark Youlton, finance director of East Lancashire CCG, which will get £600,000, said the money will be “very useful”, adding: “NHS England has put some more money into the system which will help out with additional capacity. My hope is we’ll get that next month.”

Blackburn with Darwen CCG will receive £386,000.

Simon Stevens, NHS England chief executive, said: “The NHS has made huge progress over the past decade in slashing long waits, so the median wait for patients having an operation is now under 10 weeks. To lock-in that achievement – and go further in eliminating the longest waits – CCGs are now using earmarked extra funding to commission more elective surgery.”