Qualitywatch

NHS performance tracker

Our monthly-updated analysis of the NHS's performance against totemic access and waiting times targets.

The analysis below includes the latest data on key activity and performance measures from July and August 2024, as published by NHS England on 12 September 2024. This includes data on the NHS's performance against some key targets, including some of those set out in the latest planning guidance, as well as other indicators of patient safety and care.

Planned hospital care and diagnostic test waiting times

• The waiting list to start elective (planned) care remained at 7.62 million between June and July 2024.
• This is despite the second-highest number of people on record, 1.61 million, starting consultant-led treatment (and therefore leaving the waiting list) in July 2024.
• 6.39 million people were waiting to start elective care in July 2024, similarly to the previous month. This is lower than the overall waiting list of 7.62 million because some people are waiting for multiple treatments.
• There is a revised objective to have no more people waiting over 65 weeks to start consultant-led elective treatment by September 2024 (except where patients choose to wait longer), replacing the original objective for this to happen by March 2024. There were 50,900 waits over 65 weeks in July 2024, a drop of over 7,000 on the previous month.
• The median time that patients had been on the waiting list was 14.0 weeks in July 2024. This is similar to July last year, but nearly double what it was before the pandemic in July 2019 (7.3 weeks).
• The number of waits of over 52 weeks to start elective care stood at 290,000 in July 2024 – a decrease of 12,000 on June. In July 2019, there were only 1,260 waits of over 52 weeks. The aim is to have nobody having to wait this long by March 2025.
• 22% of people waited over six weeks for a diagnostic test in June 2024. This is a slight improvement on the previous month, but is far beyond the 1% target, as well as the objective of 5% by March 2025.

For more information, see our treatment waiting times and diagnostic test waiting times indicators. For information on the recategorisation of community service pathways, see the NHS statistical press notice. 

 

Cancer waiting times

• In July 2024, 38% of patients who had their first treatment for cancer following an urgent GP referral waited longer than two months, a marginal improvement on the previous month. This is far from the historic target of only 15% of patients waiting this long, which has only been met once since April 2014.
• In July 2024, 17,600 patients were recorded on this pathway, with 11,000 being seen within two months. When the 15% threshold target was last met in December 2015, only 11,500 were on this pathway, with 9,760 being seen within two months.
• In December, NHS England began publishing new cancer waiting time standards. For the new standard concerning two-month waits from an urgent suspected cancer referral, breast symptomatic referral, urgent screening referral, or consultant upgrade to a first treatment for cancer, 32% waited longer than the target time to begin treatment in July 2024. This is down slightly from June 2024, moving performance towards from the new objective of reducing this proportion to 30% by March 2025. The 15% standard has not come close to being met during the period for which records are available.
• In July 2024, for the third consecutive month, the NHS met the recently introduced Faster Diagnosis Standard to have 75% of patients having their cancer diagnosed or ruled out within 28 days, with 76% of patients doing so.

For more information, see our cancer waiting time targets indicator. Data for the first cancer chart from April 2023 onwards has been derived from NHS England’s commissioner-based cancer waiting times data extract. This is due to changes in the cancer waiting times standards which have led to changes in the published national-level data.  

Emergency care

A&E

• In August 2024, there were 2.16 million attendances to A&E departments. This represents a 23% increase on August 2010, when there were only 1.75 million attendances.
• A&E attendances for Type 1 departments, which deal with serious accidents and emergencies, fell slightly between August 2019 and August 2024. On the other hand, attendances for Type 3 departments, which tend to minor injuries and illnesses, grew by 5% from August 2019 to August 2024.
• Of all people attending A&E, 23.7% spent more than four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge in August 2024. This is the best performance for the service since September 2021.
• Although the long-standing 95% standard remains beyond reach, the March 2024 objective of 76% of patients being seen within the 4-hour window has finally been met, albeit five months later than it was due.
• Trolley waits (the time between a decision to admit a patient and them being admitted) of over four hours decreased by around 12,000 compared to the previous month to approximately 116,000 in August 2024. This is the lowest it has been in the past 12 months, and 3% less than August last year.
• Whilst the number of emergency admissions in August 2024 is similar to those in 2019, trolley waits over four hours are double what they were in August 2019.
• There were 28,494 trolley waits of over 12 hours in August 2024, a 1% decrease on the previous year. This is the first time it has been under 30,000 in the past 12 months, but pre-pandemic it was only a small fraction of its current value (371 trolley waits in August 2019).

For more information, see our A&E waiting times indicator.

Ambulances

• In August 2024, there was an average response time of 8 minutes 3 seconds to Category 1 incidents (life-threatening conditions, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest) – twenty seconds faster than the average over the last 12 months. June 2021 was the last time that response times were under 8 minutes. The seven-minute target remains out of reach.
• One in 10 people involved in a Category 1 incident waited over 14 minutes 25 seconds, meeting the target of 90% of patients with a Category 1 incident being reached within 15 minutes.
• Average response times to Category 2 incidents (emergency conditions such as stroke or heart attack) were 27 minutes 25 seconds in August 2024 – 6 minutes shorter than they were the previous month in July 2024. While this is still nearly twice the mean target of 18 minutes, it represents a significant improvement in performance.

For more information, see our ambulance response times indicator. 

About this data

QualityWatch provides independent scrutiny of the health and social care system. The most recent data published today reflects changes in access and waiting times in the aftermath of the pandemic.

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.

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