NHS wait lists fall but new data excludes thousands

Patients still waiting for community services such as physios and podiatrists no longer included in total

THE NHS waiting list fell for the fifth month in a row – but only after thousands were excluded from the data.

The waiting list fell by 36,100 to 7.54 million as of the end of February but only because this number of people who are waiting for an appointment in a community service was not counted.

These people, including those waiting for appointments with physiotherapists, mental health specialists and podiatrists, are facing some of the longest waits of all.

NHS officials said the 36,000 were removed because they are recorded separately as part of waiting lists for community health services, which mainly attend to people in their homes.

However, the change meant official data on those waiting the longest also fell with 9,969 people waiting more than 18 months, down from 14,013 in January. This figure had previously risen six months in a row.

The NHS also missed reduced A&E targets despite a £50 million incentive package.

Hospitals were told in January they could receive bonuses worth £2 million if, by March, they saw 76 per cent of patients at emergency departments within four hours.

The NHS has not met the standard 95 per cent target since 2015 and introduced a temporary lower metric to incentivise staff.

In March, 74.2 per cent were seen within four hours, the most since April 2023, but narrowly missed the target.

Officials said it was the busiest month ever for A&ES in England with more than 2.35 million people turning up in March.

There were also cash rewards worth £2 million for those making the biggest improvements in a move that left emergency medicine leaders worried doctors would target “low priority” cases.

Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), said the “small improvements were hard to celebrate” with so many people waiting for so long.

He said all the “operational attention is being put on the people who can be sent home, but the people who need to be admitted are waiting a long time”.

“The problem with setting the target so low is you create this very uneven playing field with lots of attention on people with cut fingers and sprained ankles, and not nearly enough attention on the people with strokes and heart attacks who need to be admitted to hospital,” he told BBC’S Today programme.

Recent RCEM analysis found that more than 250 excess deaths a week were due to long A&E waits.

Dr Tim Cooksley, former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “With a sense of tragic inevitability and predictability, the headline target of hitting 76 per cent four-hour performance has been missed.

“This is despite a range of short-term incentives and initiatives implemented with a desperate hope of hitting this unambitious metric,” he said. “Crucially this has focused on less urgent cases with the sickest and most vulnerable patients waiting longer which is clinically illogical.

Victoria Atkins, the Health Secretary, said she understood the “pain and anguish” long waiting lists caused.

She said the situation could be improved by junior doctors ending their industrial action.

“We know the pain and the anguish that waiting lists cause people – none of us want people to be waiting for the treatments they need,” she told ITV’S Good Morning Britain. “That’s why the Prime Minister set it as one of his five priorities, and nobody pretended at the time that this was going to be easy.”