After 108,602 more procedures and appointments had to be rescheduled due to last week's three-day strike by junior doctors, and with nurses, consultants – who could strike for two days in July – and radiographers being balloted about more industrial action, Miriam Deakin, director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, said:

"Now 651,232 routine operations and appointments have had to be rescheduled due to industrial action across England since December, right across already overstretched hospital, ambulance, mental health and community services.

"Strikes cannot become 'business as usual' for trusts and patients. Trusts have had to deal with seven consecutive months of disruptive and demoralising industrial action in the NHS and leaders are working hard to prepare for a possible eighth.

"Trust leaders and their staff continue to pull out all the stops to cushion the impact of strikes with patient safety the top priority. But they are worried about the long-term effects on patients who have their care delayed at a time when waiting lists are already at record levels, the impact on staff morale and the rising cost of paying to provide cover.

"Only serious talks between the government and the doctors' union can break the deadlock but in a speech in the middle of last week's strike health and social care secretary Steve Barclay made no mention of steps to settle the dispute.

"While ministers and the doctors' union aren't talking, patients pay the price of the stand-off.

"The longer that industrial action goes on and trusts have to keep coping with the fall-out from the most significant period of industrial action in the history of the NHS, the less they can focus all of their energy on patients and help to meet the government's pledge to cut waiting lists."