Numbers on NHS waiting list drop – but meeting target a challengepublished at 10:27 British Summer Time 12 June
Nick Triggle
Health correspondent
We
now have the latest waiting time figures for the NHS in England.
It
comes the day after the government set out an above-inflation boost to the
health budget in the coming years.
Ministers
have made hitting the waiting time target for hospital treatment, for things
like knee and hip operations, one of its key missions this parliament.
These
figures show just how far the NHS remains behind the 18-week target, which
requires 92% to be seen within 18 weeks.
April
performance was just below 60%. However, the overall numbers on the waiting
list dropped to 7.39 million, down from 7.42 million in March.
That
provides some good news for the government – the March figure was a rise on the
month before, the first time the waiting list had gone up in six months.
Waiting
times can jump around a bit over the course of the year so we should not read
too much into one set of figures. But with this target having not been hit
since 2016 achieving its NHS mission, even with the extra money, remains a
major challenge.
