Reducing the NHS Waiting List

The government announced ‘6 Milestones’ against which it wants us to judge its success. Among them is a determination to lower the NHS Waiting List times in England (it also includes building new housing – see our explanation of those numbers), but what does that actually mean?

The target that’s been set is 92% of all routine operations and treatments should be completed within 18 weeks [1]. They want to hit that mark by March, 2029.

What might have been forgotten is that this 92% target has already been a statutory right for all patients in England since April 2012 [2].

But it’s not a target that’s been achieved since 2015.

The average amount of waiting time for the target 92nd percentile to receive treatment as of March, 2024, was…

The ‘18-weeks’ target was already heading in the wrong direction since a high watermark of 94.2% in 2013, but the Covid pandemic has had a significant - and longer-term - impact. In the four years since March 2020, the waiting list has grown at an average of 11,756 extra patients (0.28%) per week.

On it’s current trajectory, by the autumn of 2025 the waiting list will have doubled in size since the pandemic first struck. Not only does the population appear to be getting sicker, the NHS capacity to complete treatment is actually lower now than it was in 2020…

The government plan is to deliver an additional 40,000 NHS appointments and procedures each week [3]. That would be enough to reduce the list by nearly 600,000 a year based on current trends.

An extra £25.7 billion over the current and next fiscal years has been allocated - the largest increase in NHS spending since 2010, excluding COVID-19 expenditures - check the notes below to see where the money’s going [4]. As always, the key to success lies in the execution, and we shall be tracking the data.

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Notes:

1. Known via the rather wordy title of ‘Referral to treatment (RTT) waiting times for consultant-led elective care’. Here’s where to find this data. NHS England.

2. Introduced by the Health Act 2009 and strengthened under the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

3. The waiting list has grown by an average 28,535 per week for the year to October, 2024.

4. See how it will be spent. New Surgical Hubs: £1.5 billion to establish hubs capable of performing over 30,000 additional procedures and more than 1.25 million diagnostic tests; Radiotherapy Machines: £70 million to invest in advanced equipment to enhance cancer treatment; Technology and Digital Improvements: Over £2 billion to boost productivity and save staff time through technological advancements; Social Care Support: An increase of over £600 million in local government spending to bolster social care services; Mental Health Crisis Centres: £26 million to open new centres addressing mental health emergencies.