Responding to the latest monthly NHS performance statistics, Nuffield Trust Deputy Director of Research, Sarah Scobie said:
“The latest stats reveal the last minute scramble the NHS is experiencing with the fast-approaching deadline to improve planned treatment waiting times.
“Seeing the waiting list fall substantially for a few months in a row is a relief, but the NHS is still some way off hitting the March goal of 65% of patients treated within 18 weeks. Even if they get close to this through short bursts of improvement, it remains incredibly difficult to sustain this trend over longer periods. The health service has to ‘sprint’ to make sudden dents in the waiting list because money is spread too thinly across competing priorities for year-round progress. Patients will want to see waits getting consistently better, not just when there is a deadline looming.
“The sporadic improvements we see are not all about the NHS delivering more care. There was another uptick in ‘unreported removals’ from the waiting list in January, which includes tidying up the data as much as possible by removing patients who don’t need to be on there anymore. It’s a legitimate process, but the NHS and the government need to be clear with the public if this plays a big role in getting the overall size of the list down, rather than attributing all the success to more treatment happening.
“The chances of the NHS meeting the target for only 22% of patients to wait more than four hours in A&E are now vanishingly small. There has been barely any progress on four hour waits compared with this time last year, and with the focus on this target, we must not lose sight of the horrendously long waits of over 12 hours which tens of thousands of patients are still facing every month.”