Rod Stewart pays for scans at NHS hospital to cut waiting lists

Sir Rod Stewart has paid for a day's worth of MRI scans for patients at his local NHS hospital in a bid to help cut waiting lists.

The singer, who lives in Essex, visited the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow as some scans were taking place.

Last month he called a live phone-in on Sky News and offered to pay for people to have hospital scans, having just returned from having a scan himself.

Sir Rod said he wanted to "prove I'm not all mouth and trousers".

The 77-year-old's donation is covering a day of scans for patients, which were being carried out at private healthcare firm InHealth's mobile MRI scanning unit at the hospital site.

"I had just come from my scan in a private clinic near Harley Street," he said.

"I walked in and said 'I'm terribly sorry, I'm half an hour late'.

"They said 'don't worry, there's hardly anybody in here today'.

"There were eight people with hardly anything to do. Then I thought this is a terrible injustice, so here we are."

The singer said he did not want this gesture to be a one-off, and said: "If this is a big success, which I think it will be, I'd like to do it in Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, and just keep it going, and hope some other people follow me.

"Because I want to prove I'm not all mouth and trousers and that's why I'm here to prove that I followed through with it."

Although he said he did not wish to talk about politics, when pressed on the state of the NHS, he said: "There must be enough money in the coffers to pay up for these nurses. Only two years ago we were clapping, and now...

"Bless them, they work so hard - salt of the earth."

"We've got to sort this out, really. We're in dire straits."

He said he felt he was in "a privileged position - I've earned my money and I want to help people - it's as simple as that".

While the Department of Health and Social Care did not wish to comment specifically on Sir Rod's actions, in its blog from December, it set out its plans with NHS England to bring down waiting lists for non-urgent care, including planned operations.

It said up to £14.1bn was "available over the next two years on top of record funding to tackle the backlog" caused by the pandemic.

It said the aim was to eliminate waits of longer than a year for elective care by March 2025.

The blog said that by July 2022, no-one would have to wait longer than two years for elective [non-urgent] treatment, and the NHS aimed to eliminate waits of more than 18 months by April 2023.

While at the Harlow hospital, Sir Rod met patient Omarie Ryan, 36, who had come from London for a knee scan.

Mr Ryan described the meeting as "a dream come true".

The hospital said it currently had just over 7,000 people on its waiting lists for scans (MRI, CT and non-obstetric ultrasound).

The average wait for a routine test was about eight weeks, while the national target was a wait of six weeks, it added.

The hospital's chief operating officer, Stephanie Lawton, said the day of scans funded by Sir Rod would help reduce their waiting list by about10%, or 20 or so patients.

"Rod's a local resident, we're his local hospital, we're really delighted to be working with him and his team for the benefit of patients and doing everything we can to reduce the waiting lists," she said.

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