WIREDGOV

Sarah Arnold, Senior Policy Lead at The King’s Fund, responded to the latest monthly NHS performance data and latest NHS weekly winter sit reps 

‘With depressing predictability, health services are in the depths of the annual NHS winter crisis. There are already reports of patients waiting more than two days to be seen in A&E and long ambulance handover delays, and critical incidents have been declared at hospitals up and down the country. The consequence is that patients are being cared for in unsuitable conditions, such as trolley beds in hospital corridors.   

‘Extreme pressures in A&E are the bellwether for a health care system that is under intense strain. Throughout the year, NHS services are run worryingly close to full capacity, and spikes in demand for care when cold weather, flu or other seasonal pressures hit can be catastrophic.  

‘These figures also show 71% of people waited under four hours in A&E, when the target is 95%, and the average ambulance response time to conditions such as strokes and heart attacks was over 47 minutes, when the standard is 18 minutes. At the same time, 53,000 staff absences on average across the week due to illness further reduces the ability to meet patient demand.   

‘The data also shows that the waiting list for routine care stands at 7.48 million. This week, the government set out how it plans to reduce the number of people waiting longer than 18 weeks to be seen for routine care, such as hip and knee operations, with an ambition that by March 2026, 65% of patients will be seen within 18 weeks compared to the current level of 59%. This type of improvement has been achieved before in the 2000s; however, the circumstances back then, when the overall waiting list was just over half of what it is now, were quite different to today. In 2023/24, only one third of NHS trusts made any improvement at all in the percentage of patients seen within 18 weeks. So far in 2024/25 more than four in ten (42%) have not made any improvement. 

‘Recovering the 18-week standard by the end of this parliament might just be doable, but it will mean ministers throwing everything at the elective waiting lists, leaving very little energy or resources to drive the much-needed fundamental reforms required to treat more people in the community and prevent illness in the first place. Without those reforms, distressing scenes of overcrowded A&E departments will continue to be an unwelcome feature of the NHS every winter.’ 

Notes to editors