John Appleby responds to March's Combined Performance Summary

Several measures are heading in the right direction but the number of admissions to hospital are still a cause for concern.

Press release

Published: 11/05/2017

Commenting on NHS England’s Combined Performance Summary for March, published this morning, Prof John Appleby, Director of Research and Chief Economist at the Nuffield Trust health think-tank, said:

“It is encouraging that several measures are heading in the right direction after an extremely tough winter for the NHS, with the proportion of people being seen or treated in A&E in four hours and those receiving planned hospital treatment within 18 weeks both increasing.  But the fact that the number of patients admitted to hospital as an emergency in March was the highest ever recorded in a single month is a cause for concern, when there is considerable effort going in to slowing the growth of these admissions.

“And although performance against many of the measures is slowly improving, a large number of the targets themselves are still being missed –  the main cancer waiting time standard, for example, has only been met three times in the last 37 months”.

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