The number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has risen to its highest level since records began 15 years ago, with emergency and ambulance expectations also rising amid Covid’s high levels of staff shortages. and increased demand.
NHS figures show that 6.2 million people are waiting to start treatment, the highest number since records began in August 2007.
Of these, 23,281 have been waiting for more than two years. The NHS England said it was a drop of 23,778 at the end of January, but that’s about nine times the 2,608 people who waited so long in April 2021.
Ministers have vowed to remove all expectations from more than two years to July. But doctors, NHS executives and health experts say the goal seems increasingly unattainable. The Guardian revealed on Wednesday that operations were being canceled across England as Covid caused major disruption to the NHS.
The NHS is under severe pressure caused by a combination of unprecedented search for emergency and urgent care, tens of thousands of Covid-related staff absences, large numbers of people in Covid’s hospitals and delays in discharging patients because Covid and workforce gaps hit social care services.
Thursday’s figures show the scale of the crisis. The proportion of people waiting more than four hours in emergency and medical departments rose to their highest level in March. Just over 28% of people waited at least four hours in all A&Es, while in type 1 A&E – those in large hospitals – the percentage was 41%. There were more than 2.1 million A&E visits in March, up 28.5% from March 2021.
A record 22,506 people waited more than 12 hours at A&E in March from the decision to admit until their actual admission. This rose from 16,404 in February and is the highest for any calendar month in August 2010 records.
“Today’s data underscores the extreme pressure on NHS patients and staff, with millions of people experiencing the negative effects of a health system struggling with unbearable stress,” said Hugh Alderwick, director of policy at the Health Foundation.
Daniel Jeffries, an analyst at the King’s Fund’s health think tank, said that despite the government’s recent focus on tackling the backlog, the data showed “pressure that is now reaching unacceptable levels in all parts of the healthcare system”.
The average response time last month for ambulances in England dealing with the most urgent incidents – calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries – was nine minutes and 35 seconds. This is up eight minutes and 51 seconds in February and is the longest average since the beginning of current records in August 2017.
Ambulances in England took an average of one hour, one minute and three seconds last month to respond to emergency calls such as burns, epilepsy and strokes. This increased from 42 minutes and seven seconds in February and is the longest recorded time for this category of additional descriptions.
Dr Tim Kuxley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said it was “deeply troubling” that “the inability to even come close to meeting the implementation targets is already expected” every month. “There is no chance of restoring elective care until the systemic problems of emergency and emergency care are resolved effectively and in the long term,” he said.
Professor Stephen Powys, NHS’s National Medical Director in England, said: “No one should have any illusions about how hard NHS staff work, balancing competitive priorities and maintaining high-quality patient care.
Despite pressure from multiple fronts, the longest waits for patients are declining, he added, and staff are working hard to adopt innovative approaches to help patients heal faster.
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