Health leaders have blamed staff shortages for waiting lists reaching another record high, with 7.4 million people in England waiting to start treatment as of the end of April.
One NHS leader said the figures showed that unsustainable “pressure continues to pile on an overstretched NHS”, and urged the government to speed up publication of its long-awaited workforce plan, which has been repeatedly postponed.
Waiting list figures in England have crept up again after showing signs of improvement in recent months, despite Rishi Sunak citing bringing numbers down as one of the government’s top five priorities for 2023.
Downing Street on Thursday insisted the NHS was “continuing to make progress to ensure patients are seen more quickly”, pointing to record numbers of doctors and nurses in the NHS.
The number of people waiting more than a year rose in April to more than 371,111, while close to 11,500 have been waiting more than 18 months to start routine hospital treatment at the end of April, up from about 10,700 at the end of March.
The government and the NHS had previously pledged to eliminate 18-month waits by April 2023 other than exceptionally complex cases or by patients’ choice.
Saffron Cordery, the deputy chief executive at NHS Providers, said “demand continues to outstrip capacity in the NHS”, with trust leaders facing record demand in urgent and emergency care.
Last month was the busiest May on record for A&E attendances at close to 2.3 million, 4,500 more patients a day more than the previous month.
Cordery said: “Not only are [trust leaders] still recovering from one of the toughest winters ever, but they are having to manage escalating strikes and worrying levels of staff burnout. Every part of the NHS is under strain including community and mental health services.”
Saoirse Mallorie, a senior analyst at the King’s Fund thinktank, said the figures showed “stalling progress”, which she said was due to NHS staff working “flat out” and pressure on hospital and social care services delaying medically fit people from leaving. “Further planned industrial action this month will cause additional disruption,” she added.
“We seem to be stuck in a loop of national NHS workforce plans being repeatedly promised and then postponed, while patients and staff continue to pay the price of protracted uncertainty,” she said, adding that the plan and its funding arrangements would be a “real test” of the government’s commitment to the NHS.
Tim Gardner, the assistant director of policy at the Health Foundation charity, noted that the root cause of the long waiting lists was “over a decade in the making”.
Referencing figures showing that in May, over 31,000 people spent more than 12 hours “often in avoidable pain” on trolleys in emergency departments waiting for a hospital bed, he said: “Until the government has a coherent long-term strategy for recruiting and retaining enough staff, there is no viable route out of this crisis.”
NHS England said it was making progress and that staff were working hard to reduce long waits for elective care with more than 1.2 million people receiving elective treatment in April.
The NHS England national medical director, Prof Sir Stephen Powis, attributed the increase to people “who may have put off coming forward for care over the past few years of the pandemic” seeking help.
He added that a record number of people had received cancer checks or started treatment for cancer within the service in the past year.
NHS data shows that the service missed all its cancer targets in April, worse than in the previous month. Just 78% of patients were seen within two weeks of an urgent referral to a cancer consultant by their GP, down from 84% in March and significantly below the target of 91%.
Minesh Patel, the head of policy at the charity Macmillan Cancer Support, said the impact of long waiting lists on people with cancer was devastating. “Thousands of people with cancer are continuing to be let down by a system that simply cannot cope”, resulting in excruciating delays to receive a diagnosis or start treatment, leading to anxiety and putting lives at risk, he said.
The NHS data also shows that ambulance callouts for emergency calls, including for heart attacks and strokes, took an average of 32 minutes and 24 seconds in May, almost six minutes longer than the month previous.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Cutting waiting lists is one of the government’s top five priorities, and the NHS has reduced the number of patients waiting for more than 18 months by over 91% since the September 2021 peak and virtually eliminated two-year waits for treatment, despite more people coming forward for treatment.
“There are more doctors, nurses and staff working in the NHS than ever before, which has led to a record number of cancer patients being treated over the last two years – and in April there were a record number of diagnostic tests carried out per working day.
“Our elective and urgent and emergency care recovery plans will deliver one of the fastest and longest sustained improvements in waiting times in NHS history, and we have made up to £14.1bn available for health and social care over the next two years, on top of record funding.”
