The NHS Confederation has published a briefing on Building back inclusively: Radical approaches to tackling the elective backlog.
There is evidence suggesting that waiting lists have grown more rapidly in more deprived areas during the pandemic. There are good reasons to believe that the current approach to elective care, whereby patients are treated in the order they present for care, exacerbates inequalities and worsens health outcomes. The briefing sets out a package of measures, including the politically uncomfortable step of proactively growing the waiting list to address this.
Read the full report [opens in PDF]