The NHS waiting list fell in December for the third month
running, while winter pressure continued to hit the health
service hard with A&E and ambulance services experiencing
their busiest ever January.
England’s top doctor hailed the hard work and dedication of staff
as new figures show the number of patients waiting for elective
treatment fell by more than 19,000 in December, despite the NHS
needing to reschedule 86,329 appointments due to industrial
action.
The new figures, published today, show that the overall covid
backlog fell by more than 6,200 in December for the third
consecutive month and is now down by 164,898 since September to
7.6million.
Monthly performance statistics show that the proportion of people
waiting over a year for elective care is the lowest it has been
since November 2020, at 4.4% of the entire waiting list.
NHS staff also delivered more elective activity in 2023 than in
any other year since the start of the pandemic – with more than
17.3 million people treated.
The latest data also shows the significant demand for services in
January, as the NHS managed the longest period of industrial
action in its history with six days of strikes by junior doctors.
Weekly winter data shows that flu is at its highest point this
winter – there were an average of 2,478 patients in hospital each
day with flu last week, including 106 in critical care - up
almost 160% from 961 in the same week last year. This is on top
of 568 patients a day with norovirus and 3,563 patients with
Covid.
There were 2.23 million A&E attendances - a record for
January – with more than a 10% increase in emergency admissions
from A&E, compared to the same month last year.
Paramedics responded to a record number of category one ambulance
call outs (81,866) for January, while 999 call handlers answered
828,000 calls, - 26,000 more than the previous record for January
(802,000).
Despite these record levels of pressure for January, ambulances
responded to Category one call outs almost 20 seconds faster than
in the previous month, and nearly six minutes faster for Category
2 call outs.
There were 10% more people were seen within four hours in A&E
than the same time last year (1,402,354 vs 1,274,038).
The significant progress came thanks to robust winter planning
that has seen more beds, new ambulances and the rollout of
measures such as care traffic control centres, urgent community
response teams and same day emergency care.
Bed occupancy remained high in weekly data at 94.7% despite
the NHS putting in place 2,209 extra general and acute beds than
the year before, including 99,876 core beds. There were 2,189
more adults in hospital last week than the year before, with
13,662 beds taken up by patients medically fit for discharge.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS national medical
director, said: “It has been an extremely challenging
winter so far with two periods of industrial action, including
the longest strike in NHS history last month, so a further fall
in the number of patients waiting for treatment and improvements
in ambulance response times, is a testament to the continued hard
work and dedication of NHS staff.
“We know the NHS is seeing more patients coming forward with
complex and severe conditions, with the number of emergency
admissions from A&E up by more than 10% on last year, while
Category one calls are up 12% on the year before, which puts
greater pressure on the services and staff treating them.
“The figures for last week demonstrate winter pressures continue
to hit the NHS hard, with hundreds more flu patients in hospital
every day compared to last year, and challenges discharging
patients effecting bed occupancy and the speed at which patients
flow through hospitals.
“As ever, I would encourage the public to use services in the
usual way by using NHS 111 to get advice on the best service for
their condition, and by calling 999 in life-threatening
emergencies.”
Some 2.04 million patients received vital diagnostic tests or
checks in December – up 9% on the previous year. The
diagnostic waiting list was down to the lowest level (1.554m)
since December 2022.
Almost three quarters of people received the all-clear or a
definitive diagnosis for cancer in December (74.2%) – more than
168,000 people, and nearly 14,000 more than last year.
The monthly performance data and weekly winter data can be found
on our website here.
