Qualitywatch

NHS performance dashboard ^(beta)

Our new beta-launched dashboard provides an overview of NHS performance in England against some of the most widely recognised access and waiting times targets. 

• In October 2024, the overall waiting list to start elective (planned) care decreased again to 7.54 million. A record number of people started treatment in October.
• 28% of people attending A&E spent more than four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge in November 2024.
• Average category 2 (emergency conditions such as stroke or heart attack) ambulance response times were over 42 minutes, which is the highest they have been since last December.

A&E and ambulance

Waiting times for diagnostics and planned care

For interactive charts showing the quality of health and social care over time, please refer to our 200+ indicators.

Notes

Two month (62 day) cancer waits are from urgent suspected cancer referrals, breast symptomatic referrals, urgent screening referrals, or consultant upgrades.

Between May 2019 and May 2023, in response to proposals made in the Clinically-Led Review of NHS Access Standards Interim Report, 14 hospital trusts acted as field testing sites for alternatives to the existing four-hour A&E standard. During this period, these trusts did not report performance on the four-hour standard and are hence absent from the data for May 2019 to May 2023. Reporting on the findings of the Clinical Review of Standards for Urgent and Emergency Care is now available.

Methodology

The data used in this dashboard is extracted from NHS England’s monthly performance statistics publication. This is published on the second Thursday of each month. It provides data from the previous month for A&E and ambulance performance, and for the month before this for elective care, cancer, and diagnostics performance.