The NHS is missing so many of its key performance targets that it has entered “the perpetual winter of Narnia”, a medical leader has said, after figures revealed the highest ever number of patients on waiting lists.
Claire Marx, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, criticised the NHS’s failure to give patients planned care in hospital within the required 18 weeks, such as surgery for cataract removals, hernia repairs and hip and knee replacements.
The number of people in England who are awaiting such treatments has climbed to almost 3.9 million.
Hospitals are meant to treat 92% of patients on the “referral-to-treatment” (RTT) waiting list within 18 weeks, according to guarantees in the NHS constitution. However, they did so in just 91.3% of cases in July, NHS-wide performance data released on Thursday shows. It was the service’s worst RTT performance in more than five years.
Full story in The Guardian 8 September 2016