The number of patients waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has soared to a new record
Public Group active 3 years, 1 month agoThe number of patients waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has soared to a new record of 6.18million, as ambulance and emergency department waits also reach all-time highs. data shows one in nine people were in the queue, often in pain, for elective operations such as hip and knee replacements and cataracts surgery by February — up from 6.1million in January. Separate data shows A&E performance plummeted to its worst ever level in March, with a record 22,506 people waiting 12 hours to be treated, three times longer than the NHS target. Just seven in 10 patients in casualty units were seen within the four-hour threshold, marking the worst performance yet. Ambulance figures reveal heart attack and stroke patients were left waiting for more than an hour for paramedics to arrive on average — another record.Health bosses argue the NHS has faced its busiest ever winter and a slight drop among the longest waiters show it is tackling the backlog.
NHS leaders said the health service needs more cash to fill its 110,000 vacancies and ongoing problems in social care, despite receiving a record £136.1 billion this year to help it recover from Covid.Ministers announced an elective recovery plan earlier this year, https://healthtopical.com/stretch-marks-in-shoulder/ setting out how waiting lists will finally start to fall from March 2024, while two-year waits would be scrapped by the summer. But experts today warned ‘it is hard to imagine an end in sight, with lengthy waits for healthcare firmly here to stay’.It comes as doctors today record-high Covid infection are leading to operations being cancelled across England, despite daily admissions and the number of infected patients in hospital trending downwards. The graph shows the NHS England waiting list for routine surgery, such as hip and knee operations (red line), hit a record high 6.18million in February.
The figure is 46 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels and 1.3 per cent more than in January. Official figures also revealed that the number of patients forced to wait more than two years (yellow bars) stood at 23,281 in February, which is 497 patients (two per cent) less than one month earlier NHS England data shows medics took an average of one hour, one minute and three seconds last month to respond to emergency calls, such as heart attacks, strokes, burns and epilepsy, in March.
The figure is up from 42 minutes and seven seconds in February and is the longest time on record (red bars). It is also more than triple the NHS target of 18 minutes NHS data shows a record 22,506 people had to wait more than 12 hours in March from a decision to admit to actually being admitted (yellow bars).
The number is up from 16,404 in February, signalling a 37 per cent month-on-month jump, and is the highest since records began in August 2010. And just 71.6 per cent of patients in England were seen within four hours at A&Es last month, the lowest percentage in records going back to November 2010 (red line) RELATED ARTICLES
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The record 6.18million people in the backlog in February is 46 per cent higher than the 4.2million people in England stuck in the queue in March 2020, before the pandemic wreaked havoc across the country.The figure is also 1.3 per cent higher than the 6.1million from January. Some 3.8million of those in the queue have been waiting for at least four months, while 2.3million have been waiting for more than four months — both of which are higher than one month earlier.<div class="art-ins mol-factbox news halfRHS" data-version="2" id="mol-2b6dc230-bbde-11ec-af3f-271f3432e4a2" website waiting list hits ANOTHER high amid Covid-fuelled crisis
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