New NHS data on waiting times

ELECTIVE CARE

The picture in elective care continues to be more people waiting longer for care, with the total waiting list growing to a record 7.47 million by the end of May. This included around 6.5 million people, with approximately one million people waiting for multiple appointments on different pathways. Other key stats:

• 11,446 appointments require waits of up to 18 months

• 285,022 appointments require waits of up to a year

• 92% of appointments require a wait of up to 46.4 weeks - the official target for this is 18 weeks

CANCER

The key NHS cancer targets are that 93% of patients wait no longer than 2 weeks from urgent referral to first appointment, and that 85% of patients wait no longer than 2 months from urgent referral to first treatment.

In May:

• Only 80.8% of referrals were seen within 2 weeks

• Only 58.7% of referrals were treated within two months

A&E

In June, there were 2,220,954 attendances at A&E departments in England.

A previous target of 95% of patients in A&E waiting no longer than 4 hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged was watered down in the UEC recovery plan to a target of 76% by March 2024.

This month, 73.3% of people were seen within this 4 hour target - a slight drop on last month's 74%.