All NHS acute hospitals in England fail to meet Labor 18-week target | NHS

All acute hospitals in England are failing to meet Keir Starmer’s key target of treating 92% of patients within 18 weeks, analysis of NHS figures reveals.

The new data reveals the scale of the challenge facing the Prime Minister this year as he attempts to reform the NHS. The most recent waiting list data reveals that in some hospitals more than half of patients wait more than 18 weeks. Of 124 acute trusts across the country, none are meeting the target, according to analysis of figures by the Observer.

Starmer outlined his “milestones” earlier this month, including clearing hospital backlogs to meet the NHS standard of 92% of patients waiting no more than 18 weeks for elective treatments. This standard was last met in September 2015. A 10-year plan to reform the NHS is due to be published in the spring.

The most recent figures released for October show the waiting list stood at 7.54 million cases, or around 6.34 million individual patients waiting for treatment. About 3.1 million cases on the list had been waiting for treatment for more than 18 weeks and 234,885 had been waiting for treatment for more than a year.

Some specialist and community trusts are meeting the target of treating 92% of patients within 18 weeks, including Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Acute hospital trusts provide services such as emergency services and a wide range of generally short-term treatments. Hospital trusts where more than half of patients were waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment in October 2024 include Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust.

An analysis carried out by the NHS Confederation in September indicated that by 2028/29 the NHS will need to undertake 50% more elective activities than it currently does to sufficiently reduce the backlog on the health list. wait to reach the standard of 18 weeks.

He said the government’s promise of 2 million extra appointments, operations and diagnostics a year only covered about 15% of the extra capacity required to reduce waiting lists and meet the target of 18 weeks in the long term, and that it should be accompanied by additional changes and reforms.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, the health system membership organization in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said progress had been made in reducing long waits, but that reaching the 18-week standard was an “ambitious goal”.

He said: “The critical number is how long people are waiting. These longest waits are slowly decreasing, and one would expect them to continue to decrease.

“We can see the trajectory, but it’s a pretty superficial path, and at the moment it doesn’t get you to the 18-week standard.”

Taylor said more fundamental reforms were needed from the NHS to deal with growing pressures on services. He said health services were facing a “doomsday scenario”, in which people got sick earlier and stayed sick longer.

He added: “The history of the NHS over the last 25 years has been marked by a series of commitments to move resources upstream, from acute care to the community, to prevention, not all of which have been realized due to the short circuit. long-term pressures, which lead to short-term interventions.

“The essential thing we need to do is improve healthy life expectancy and better manage multiple pathologies in the long term. If we do not resolve the danger, not only will the health service become unsustainable, but the entire country will also become unsustainable.”

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Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a £22.6 billion cash injection for the day-to-day running costs of the NHS, as well as a £3.1 billion increase for capital investment over two years in the fall budget.

Lord Crisp, who was chief executive of the NHS in England when a major NHS plan was announced in 2000 to improve performance through a new funding scheme, said he welcomed the focus on health community to avoid hospitalizations and encourage healthier lifestyles.

He said the challenges were greater than two decades ago and the government should consider a summit with employers, food businesses, housing providers and other partners to achieve a healthier nation. “The situation is worse than in 2000,” he said. “You won’t reduce waiting lists unless you invest massively in community care, primary care and social services. You’ll knock them down just a little, then they’ll get back up.

An NHS spokesperson said: “Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff who have adopted the latest technology and introduced innovative measures such as surgical centers, the latest data from October 2024 shows that the waiting list has decreased by more than 160,000 compared to the previous year.

“Waits of more than two years have been virtually eliminated as planned by July 2022, while the number of waits of more than one year (234,885) is the lowest since December 2020, and the number of patients waiting more than 18 weeks (3.1 million) is the lowest. the lowest since June 2023. We will work with the Government to return to treating 92% of patients within 18 weeks by the end of this Parliament.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Our change plan sets an ambitious but achievable milestone as we tackle the NHS’s legacy backlog. We will offer two million additional appointments in our first year, the equivalent of 40,000 more every week.

“We are already making progress, sending expert teams of the best clinicians to hospitals across the country to help them make their surgeries more productive, and the extra £26 billion we have secured for the NHS funds will be used to fund new surgery centres, scanners and beds as we reduce costs. “We are committed to achieving our goals of reducing waiting times for elective care and providing the best possible services to patients. “We have seen some really encouraging success with our elective hubs. Our Trafford Hub alone has carried out over 7,500 operations in the last twelve months. We will continue to innovate to provide patients with the care they need, when they need it.

A spokesperson for Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Trust said: “Since May this year, the number of patients waiting the longest has been reduced by more than half. Having now reduced the longest waiting times, we will continue to do everything we can to reduce waiting times for all patients.

A spokesperson for Sussex NHS Foundation Trust at University Hospitals said: “We are providing additional clinical capacity and making the most of the new community diagnostic centers. As a result, our waiting lists have fallen faster than most other trusts in the country, by around 30,000 since its peak, representing a reduction of almost 20%. We will continue to work at this pace to ensure people receive safe, high-quality care.