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 September and October 2024, as published by NHS England on 14 November 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 decreased slightly from 7.64 million to 7.57 million between August and September 2024.
• 6.34 million people were waiting to start elective care in September 2024, which is a marginal decrease from the previous month. This is lower than the overall waiting list of 7.57 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 nearly 23,000 waits over 65 weeks in September, missing that objective, but this is half the number of waits in August 2024, when there were more than 45,500 waits over 65 weeks.
• The median time that patients had been on the waiting list was 14.4 weeks in Septemeber 2024. This is a small improvement on September last year (14.7 weeks), but far greater than before the pandemic in September 2019 (8.0 weeks).
• The number of waits of over 52 weeks to start elective care stood at over 249,000 in September 2024 – a decrease of more than 33,000 on August 2024, and a decrease of nearly 187,000 since March 2021 when it last peaked. In September 2019, there were only 1,530 waits of over 52 weeks. The aim is to have nobody having to wait this long by March 2025.
• 23% of people waited over six weeks for a diagnostic test in September 2024. This is a marginal 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 September 2024, 38% of patients who had their first treatment for cancer following an urgent GP referral waited longer than two months. 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 September 2024, 15,540 patients were recorded on this pathway, with 9,627 being seen within two months. When the 15% threshold target was last met in December 2015, only 11,464 were on this pathway, with 9,760 being seen within two months.
• From December 2023, 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, 33% waited longer than the target time to begin treatment in September 2024. This is close to the 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 (data only exists from April 2022 onwards).
• In September 2024, despite meeting the Faster Diagnosis Standard to have 75% of patients having their cancer diagnosed or ruled out within 28 days in the previous four months, this was marginally breached again, with 74.8% 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 October 2024, there were 2.35 million attendances to A&E departments.
• A&E attendances for Type 1 departments, which deal with serious accidents and emergencies, increased by around 6% between October 2019 and October 2024. However, attendances for Type 3 departments, which tend to minor injuries and illnesses, grew by 15% from October 2019 to October 2024.
• Of all people attending A&E, 27% spent more than four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge in October 2024.
• Although the long-standing 95% standard remains beyond reach, the March 2024 objective of 76% of patients being seen within the four-hour window has been missed in October by 3 percentage points.
• As is typical when approaching winter months, trolley waits (the time between a decision to admit a patient and them being admitted) of over four hours increased by around 18,000 compared to September to nearly 149,000 in October 2024.
• Whilst the number of emergency admissions in October 2024 (567,446) is similar to those in 2019 (563,133), trolley waits over four hours are double what they were in October 2019.
• There were nearly 49,600 trolley waits of over 12 hours in October 2024, an 11% increase on the previous year and a 28% increase the previous month.

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

Ambulances

• In October 2024, there was an average (mean) response time of 8 minutes 38 seconds to Category 1 incidents (life-threatening conditions, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest) – 15 seconds slower than the average over the previous 12 months. The seven-minute target was last met in Apil 2021.
• One in 10 people involved in a Category 1 incident waited over 15 minutes 24 seconds, missing the target for the first time this year 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 42 minutes 15 seconds in October 2024. This is more than double the mean target of 18 minutes and over 6 minutes longer than they were the previous month in September 2024. 

  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 150+ indicators.