Today, NHS England published its Combined Performance Summary, which provides data on key performance measures for July and August of this year. Here we show some of these statistics and how they compare with previous years.
For interactive charts showing the quality of health and social care over time, please refer to our 300+ indicators.
Accident and Emergency
- In August 2018, 10.3% of people attending A&E spent more than 4 hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge. This is over 6% higher than August of last year, and 3 ½ times higher than it was six years ago.
- Total A&E attendances reached almost 2 million in August 2018, which is 4% higher than the same month last year.
- Emergency admissions via A&E have been increasing year-on-year, reaching over 389,000 in August 2018.
- 39,350 patients spent more than 4 hours waiting on a trolley from decision to admit to admission in August 2018. 156 patients had a trolley wait of over 12 hours, which is over 3 times higher than for the same month last year.
- Only 123 out of 134 major A&E departments (type 1) met the four-hour A&E waiting time target in August 2018.
Treatment and diagnostic test waiting times
- The total number of people waiting to start consultant-led elective treatment exceeded 4.31 million in July 2018. This is the highest ever reported since referral-to-treatment data was first collected in August 2007.
- The proportion of people waiting over 18 weeks to start elective treatment reached 12.2% in July 2018. The referral-to-treatment target has not been met since February 2016.
- 3,464 people had been waiting over 52 weeks to start consultant-led elective treatment in July 2018.
- In July 2018, 2.8% of patients had been waiting over 6 weeks for a diagnostic test. The 6-week diagnostic test waiting time target has not been met since November 2013.
Delayed transfers of care
- The total number of days that patients were delayed from being transferred or discharged was 139,983 in July 2018, which is 23% lower than in July 2017.
Cancer waiting times
- In July 2018, 21.8% of patients had been waiting longer than two months to start their first treatment for cancer following an urgent GP referral. This represents over 3,100 people, and is the worst level of performance since the dataset began in October 2009.
- The 62-day cancer target has only been met in one month over the last four years.
- Alongside this there has been an increase in the number of cancer cases being referred, from 9,148 in July 2010 to 14,361 in July 2018.