NHS waiting list falls again – but only after thousands excluded from data

NHS waiting lists protest

The NHS waiting list fell for the fifth month in a row – but only after thousands were excluded from the data.

The list fell by 36,100 to 7.54 million as of the end of February, but only because people waiting for an appointment in a community service were not counted.

These 36,100 people, including those waiting for appointments with physiotherapists, mental health specialists and podiatrists, face some of the longest waits of all.

NHS officials said they were removed because they are recorded separately as part of waiting lists for community health services, which mainly attend to people in their homes.

However, the change meant official data on those waiting the longest also fell, with 9,969 people waiting more than 18 months, down from 14,013 in January. This figure had previously risen for six months in a row.

The NHS also missed reduced A&E targets despite a £50 million incentive package. Hospitals were told in January they could receive bonuses worth £2 million if, by March, they saw 76 per cent of patients at emergency departments within four hours.

The health service has not met the standard 95 per cent target since 2015, and introduced a temporary lower metric to incentivise staff.

In March, 74.2 per cent were seen within four hours – the most since April last year – but narrowly missed the target. Officials said it was the busiest month ever for A&Es in England, with more than 2.35 million people turning up.

There were also similar cash rewards, worth £2 million, on offer for those making the biggest improvements in a move that left emergency medicine leaders worried that doctors would target “low priority” cases.

Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the “small improvements on A&E waits were hard to celebrate” with so many people waiting for so long.

He said all the “operational attention is being put on the people who can be sent home, but the people who need to be admitted are waiting a long time”.

“The problem with setting the target so low is you create this very uneven playing field, with lots of attention on people with cut fingers and sprained ankles and not nearly enough attention on the people with strokes and heart attacks who need to be admitted to hospital,” he told BBC’s Today programme.

Recent Royal College of Emergency Medicine analysis found that more than 250 excess deaths a week were due to long A&E waits.

Dr Tim Cooksley, a former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “With a sense of tragic inevitability and predictability, the headline target of hitting 76 per cent four-hour performance has been missed.

“This is despite a range of short-term incentives and initiatives implemented with a desperate hope of hitting this unambitious metric. Crucially, this has focused on less urgent cases with the sickest and most vulnerable patients waiting longer, which is clinically illogical.

“This data starkly illustrates the reality for politicians imminently writing election manifestos. There is a binary choice – significant investment with sustainable plans for increasing capacity, or continuing to preside over an NHS urgent and emergency care that is permeated with degrading corridor care and causes harm and unnecessary deaths.”

Victoria Atkins, the Health Secretary, said she understood the “pain and anguish” long waiting lists caused.

She said that the situation could be improved by junior doctors ending their industrial action after they walked out for five days in February and six in January.

“We know the pain and the anguish that waiting lists cause people – none of us want people to be waiting for the treatments they need,” she told Good Morning Britain. “And that’s why the Prime Minister set it as one of his five priorities, and nobody pretended at the time that this was going to be easy to achieve.”

The waiting list is down from a peak of almost 7.8 million but still remains more than 300,000 higher than when Rishi Sunak pledged he would cut them. Around 6.3 million people are on the official waiting list for a first appointment, with some waiting for more than one.

Speaking on a visit to Woking Community Hospital on Thursday, Mr Sunak said: “Today’s statistics clearly show we are making headway towards that goal. We still have more work to do, but our plan is working.”

However, recent data from the Office of National Statistics said it was more likely that 9.7 million people were waiting for an appointment, test or procedure, including follow-ups.

Prof Sir Stephen Powis, the NHS national medical director, said: “Today’s data demonstrates once again how the NHS is working flat out to recover services and bring down waiting times for patients, despite enormous demand on services with more people than ever before attending A&E in the last year – over a million more than before the pandemic.

“For the first time ever, the NHS exceeded its faster diagnosis standard target for cancer with almost four in five patients getting a diagnosis or all-clear within four weeks, which comes alongside significant reductions in the longest waits for planned hospital treatment and welcome improvements in both ambulance response times and the proportion of patients seen within four hours in A&E.

“We know that industrial action has had a significant impact on our elective recovery, but it is testament to the innovation and hard work of staff that 78-week waits are now down 96 per cent on the peak and 65-week waits are down by over 70 per cent, with three-quarters of the remaining waits concentrated at just 39 trusts.”

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