The NHS is struggling. In December, English A&Es saw their busiest month on record: 170,000 people waited more than four hours to be admitted and nearly 55,000 waited more than 12 hours. These are the highest figures ever recorded. Ambulance response times were their worst ever too: the average wait for emergency call-outs was 93 minutes.
Things are also bad in Scotland. Last night, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (the country’s biggest health board) ‘paused’ elective surgeries to focus on emergencies and cancer treatment. The NHS as Glaswegians knew it is simply no more. Wards are being converted into ‘flu zones’ in scenes many thought we’d left behind in the pandemic.
If the tide doesn’t turn soon, there’s no reason to believe something similar isn’t coming to England. What really terrifies doctors is all of this comes despite the health service having more money than ever, staffing numbers increasing in many specialities and a nation discouraged from using the service anyway. But, nevertheless, things still look bleak. Here’s everything we learned from this morning’s NHS England monthly figures:
- Emergency departments were busier than ever. Just under 2.3 million people turned up at A&Es in December – the highest figure since records began in 2010. Call handlers answered more 999 calls (over one million) than ever before too. This was a fifth more than they had in December 2019.
- A record number waited more than 12 hours in A&E. This graph just keeps shooting up. Some 55,000 patients waited more than 12 hours from the decision being made to admit them to actually being admitted. The real number waiting will be even higher because the clock doesn’t start while you’re waiting outside in an ambulance queue. Over 170,000 people waited more than the four hour target too and, when you include waits to be transferred or discharged, the number climbs to 700,000.
- Ambulance delays continue to mount. The average response time for a Category 2 call out – including heart attacks and strokes – climbed to over 90 minutes (the target is 18). Again, this is the worst figure we’ve ever seen. Perhaps surprisingly though, the worst delays weren’t even recorded on strike days.
- But there was better news on the waiting lists. The prime minister will be happy. He’s met his fourth pledge. Waiting lists for consultant-led treatment fell in November for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The NHS delivered 70,000 more elective treatments than in the same month in 2019. A record number of diagnostic tests were carried out as well. One wonders if the PM had seen these figures before he wrote his speech.
- Year-long waits dropped too. They are down more than 4,000 from the month before. However, that still means some 406,000 people have been waiting more than a year and 230,000 more than the NHS’s worst-case scenario model leaked to The Spectator last year.
Sunak will be pleased that the waiting list has dropped (though the fall is tiny). But the rest of the news for the health service is far worse. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has estimated 'somewhere between 300 and 500 people are dying as a consequence of delays' in emergency departments every week. There are more strikes to come, from junior doctors to paramedics. It’s hard to see how things could get much worse. But month after month the NHS figures continue to write records. Don’t expect anything different next month.
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