Hospital emergency departments are having their busiest ever summer as waiting lists rise for the third month in a row, new figures from NHS England show today. Some 4.6 million patients attended A&E over the last two months – higher than any other June and July.
The latest performance data shows that the three busiest ever months for emergency staff have been in 2024 – 77,945 attendances per day in May, 76,469 in June and 74,459 in March. More than three quarters (75.2 per cent) of patients within four hours in A&E in July, the highest proportion since September 2021 but still well below the target of 95 per cent.
Meanwhile, the waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has risen for the third month in a row. An estimated 7.62 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of June, relating to 6.
39 million patients – up slightly from 7.60 million treatments and 6.37 million patients at the end of May, NHS England said.
The list hit a record high in September 2023 with 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients, after which the figures fell for several months before starting to rise again from April this year.
Some 2,621 patients in England had been waiting more than 18 months to start routine treatment at the end of June, down sharply from 4,597 in May. The Government and NHS England set the ambition of eliminating all waits of more than 18 months by April 2023, excluding exceptionally complex cases or patients who choose to wait longe.