The number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has soared to another record of 6.36million.
NHS data shows one in nine people were in the queue for elective operations such as hip and knee replacements and cataracts surgery by March — up from 6.18million in February.
The number of patients forced to wait longer than a year jumped two per cent to 306,000, while 16,796 have been seeking treatment for more than two years — down by 28 per cent.
Separate data on A&E performance in April shows a record 24,138 people were forced to wait 12 hours or more to be treated, three times longer than the NHS target and the worst figure on record.
Just seven in 10 patients were seen within four hours of arriving at ‘absolutely packed’ emergency departments, a slight recovery from last month, making it the second-lowest rate ever recorded.
Ambulance figures for April show waits for paramedics fell compared to March but were higher than nearly all other months since records began.
Health chiefs today pleaded with Britons to get taxis or lifts from people to ease pressures, saying they would be ‘worried’ about loved ones being able to get an ambulance ‘in a timely way’.
One mother today told how of how her nine-year-old daughter fractured her skull when she fell off her bike but was told the ambulance wait would be 10 hours — 15-times longer than the 40-minue target.
The number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has soared to another record of 6.36million. NHS data shows one in nine people were in the queue for elective operations such as hip and knee replacements and cataracts surgery by March — up from 6.18million in February
Separate data on A&E performance in April shows a record 24,138 people were forced to wait 12 hours or more to be treated, three times longer than the NHS target and the worst figure on record
NHS England data shows the NHS backlog grew by another 2.8 per cent in March compared to February. Health chiefs expect the list to keep growing until March 2024, with between 9.2 and 10.7million patients on the waiting list at the peak.
Of the 6.36million waiting patients, 62.4 per cent joined the queue in the last four months, while 4.8 per cent have been waiting more than one year and 0.3 per cent have been waiting for more than two years.
One-year waiters increased by 2.3 per cent between February and March.
The number waiting two-years fell by 27.9 per cent. But the 16,796 figure is 6.4-times higher than the 2,608 people who were waiting longer than two years in April 2021.
NHS England said that increasing numbers of people were coming forward following the pandemic, with 1.8million people referred for treatment in March.
Ministers announced an elective recovery plan earlier this year, setting out how waiting lists will finally start to fall in two years, while two-year waits would be scrapped by July.
Experts have urged the NHS to make greater use of private hospitals to clear the backlog, which would enable the health service to perform tens of thousands more procedures per month at no greater cost.
A&E data shows 2million people in England showed up at emergency departments in April.
Just 72.3 per cent of people were seen within the health service’s own four-hour target — the second-lowest rate recorded since records began in 2010.
A total of 131,905 people waited at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission in March, the second-worst figure on record.
And 24,138 were forced to wait more than 12 hours.
The number is up from 22,506 in March — a 7.3 per cent month-on-month jump. That is also the highest number since records began.
NHS standards set out that at least 95 per cent of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours, but this has not been met nationally since 2015.
Separate NHS data shows 253,796 urgent cancer referrals were made by GPs in March, the highest number in records going back to October 2009.
This is up nine per cent from 232,136 in the same month last year. The equivalent figure for March 2019, a non-pandemic year, was 198,418.
Eight in 10 patients saw a specialist within two weeks, the same as the previous month.
Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of patients urgently referred for suspected cancer were diagnosed or had cancer ruled out within 28 days — missing the 75 per cent target.
Data on this metric only goes back to April 2021, so there are no comparable figures for March 2021.
Some 389,855 patients — 25 per cent of the total — were waiting longer than six weeks for one of 15 key diagnostic tests in March, including an MRI scan, non-obstetric ultrasound or gastroscopy.
The equivalent number in March 2021 was 305,061 (24 per cent of the total), while in March 2020 there were 85,749 (10 per cent).
The elective recovery plan sets the ambition that 95 per cent of patients needing a diagnostic test receive it within six weeks by March 2025.
Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England, said the figures show the health service is making ‘good progress’ tackling the backlogs, boasting of record diagnostic tests and cancer checks in March ‘as part of the most ambitious catch up plan in NHS history’.
He said: ‘We always knew the waiting list would initially continue to grow as more people come forward for care who may have held off during the pandemic.
Ambulance figures for April show waits for paramedics fell compared to March but were higher than nearly all other months since records began. Ambulances took an average of 51 minutes and 22 seconds to respond to category two calls, such as burns, epilepsy and strokes. This is nine minutes and 41 seconds quicker than one month earlier
The number of safety incidents logged by ambulance trusts in England has skyrocketed 77 per cent in the last year compared to before the pandemic, official figures show. The reports — which paramedics log with the NHS when an incident risks long-term harm or death to a patient — jumped from 312 in the year to March 2020 to 551 in the 12 months to March 2022. The figures, which mainly reflect harm due to ‘access, admission or transfer’ problems, include 201 unintended deaths, more than double the 78 logged two years ago
NHS England aims to treat 85 per cent of cancer patients who receive an urgent referral from their GP within two months, but in November 2021, the latest available, only 67.5 per cent of patients received treatment in this time frame. While the problem predates the Covid pandemic, the disruption to services caused by the virus has exacerbated the problem
England’s Covid backlog in cancer care is set to last another five years without urgent action, a leading cancer charity warned today. Graph shows: The number of patients fewer than expected to receive first cancer treatment since the start of the pandemic (red line) and how long it will take to reduce to zero if treatments continue at the current pace (dotted red line), increase 5 per cent on pre-pandemic levels (dotted green line) or increase 10 per cent on pre-pandemic levels (dotted blue line)
‘But today’s data show the number of people waiting more than two years has fallen for the second month in a row, and the number waiting more than 18 months has gone down for the first time.’
Professor Powis added: ‘There is no doubt the NHS still faces pressures, and the latest figures are another reminder of the crucial importance of community and social care, in helping people in hospital leave when they are fit to do so, not just because it is better for them but because it helps free up precious NHS bed space.’
Health leaders warn that more than one in 10 beds are currently taken up by people who are medically fit to be discharged but are stuck in hospital due to a lack of social care staff to look after them when they get out.
Ambulance data shows paramedics are arriving faster than March, which saw the worst wait times since records began in August 2017, but are still missing targets.
The average category one response time – calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries – was nine minutes and two seconds. This is 33 seconds faster than March.
Ambulances took an average of 51 minutes and 22 seconds to respond to category two calls, such as burns, epilepsy and strokes. This is nine minutes and 41 seconds quicker than one month earlier.
Response times for category three calls – such as late stages of labour, non-severe burns and diabetes – averaged two hours, 38 minutes and 41 seconds. This is 49 minutes and 32 seconds faster than March.
It comes as the number of safety incidents logged by ambulance trusts in England has skyrocketed 77 per cent in the last year compared to before the pandemic, official figures show.
The reports — which paramedics log with the NHS when an incident risks long-term harm or death to a patient — jumped from 312 in the year to March 2020 to 551 in the 12 months to March 2022.
The figures, which mainly reflect harm due to ‘access, admission or transfer’ problems, include 201 unintended deaths, more than double the 78 logged two years ago.
Health chiefs warned thousands of patients across the country could be affected every month, as not all staff reports their concerns.
The crisis in the ambulance service, triggered by record demand, ongoing Covid disruption and handover delays at hospitals, saw patients facing record waits in March.
Dr Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told BBC Radio 4’ Today programme she would be ‘worried’ about family members who needed an ambulance being able to access one in a ‘timely way’.
She said she would be ‘looking very carefully at what alternatives’ they could get, such as a taxi or a someone to drive them in.
Dr Henderson said: ‘This is more serious than we’ve ever seen it. We’ve never broken the commitment to get an ambulance to a patient in a timely way.
‘It’s part of the NHS constitution that we will get care to emergency patients without unnecessary delay. And this is the first time in my career, over 20 years as a consultant, when that has become a serious issue.’
She warned ‘an increasing number of patients’ are making their own way to hospital, with the walk-in queue now including ‘patients who should have come by ambulance’.
This makes it difficult to know who is in the queue and how serious their illness is because they have not been assessed by paramedics who ‘are very skilled at helping us prioritise’, forcing doctors to be ‘very, very vigilant’, Dr Henderson said.
She said: ‘We’ve got big queues, we can’t get flow out of our departments. The reason there is this problem, the underlying reason is that emergency departments are absolutely packed.’
Dr Henderson added: ‘We sometimes start the morning with more patients waiting to go up to the ward than cubicles that we have and that’s at the beginning of the day.
‘We can’t then get new patients in because we have no space. We end up with patients in corridors, we end up with patients in any clinical area that we can manage to put them.’
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