NHS waiting times hit five year high, analysis indicates

The Health Foundation’s Quality of care in the English NHS: In the balance, has highlighted that waiting times for many NHS urgent and emergency services in England were at their worst in 2016/17 for the last five years.

However, the report also maintained that there is so far little evidence that the quality of care for serious diseases such as heart attack, stroke and cancer, is deteriorating.

The group cited new NHS England data which showed that for A&E: 2.5 million people had to wait longer than four hours to be seen (importantly, a total of 23.4 million people visited A&E in 2016/17, up from 21.7 million in 2012/13); for cancer treatment: 26,113 waited longer than 62 days. This compares to 2012/13, when 14,936 people had to wait more than the standard; and for ambulance care: 985,583 people with life threatening conditions waited longer than eight minutes for an emergency response. This compares to 2012/13, when 557,989 people had to wait more than the standard.

Tim Gardner, senior policy fellow at the Health Foundation, said: “More people waited longer to access important areas of NHS care in 2016/17 – for things like admission to hospital from A&E, non-urgent surgery and cancer treatment – than at any time in the last five years.

“However, at the same time, the NHS is treating more people than ever before, including more people within the target waiting times.

“Crucially, for big killers like stroke, heart attack and some cancers, the latest data shows that the quality of care being delivered by the NHS is holding. This may be because it is too early to tell whether the pressures on the NHS are affecting the quality of care delivered. Or it may be a reflection of the incredible hard work of
NHS staff to ensure good quality of care is maintained despite tightening resources.

“But international comparisons also show that while there have been internationally recognised improvements in the quality of care for heart attack and stroke – for other illnesses, such as bowel and breast cancer, the NHS is still lagging behind comparable countries on patient outcomes.

“Maintaining, let alone improving, the quality of care provided is going to be very difficult in the current financial climate. Funding for the NHS in England will need to increase if these hard won gains to the quality of patient care are to be upheld and built upon in the future. Waiting time targets for A&E, cancer, and consultant-led treatment are a useful barometer of pressure on the NHS. But these data need to be published alongside more relevant and accessible data on how effective care is for patients.”