NHS misses A&E waiting time target for March 2024
On 11th April, it was confirmed that NHS Trusts had missed the nationally set target to admit, discharge or transfer 76% of patients within 4 hours of arriving at A&E by March 2024
Despite their being some improvement on the February figures, only 74.2% of patients were seen in the target time in March. The target for March 2025 has been set at 78% of patients being seen within four hours.
Healthwatch England has called on NHS England and the Government to be more ambitious when it comes to A&E performance and chart a path back to the 95% figure that was routinely achieved before 2015. We've also called for improvements to A&E facilities and conditions to improve the experience of patients accessing emergency services.
Other data was released on the elective waitlist and shows 7.54 million people were awaiting for elective treatment at the end of February this year, a slight improvement from January nd down from a record 7.7 million recorded in September last year.
Cancer wait times also improved over the last month. 78.1% of people were told if they had cancer, or if cancer was definitively excluded within four weeks (28-days) of an urgent referral (70.9% in January 2024) and 63.9% of people began their first definitive treatment of cancer within 62 days of an urgent suspected cancer referral (62.3% in January 2024).
More analyses are published as part of this statistical release on the NHS website. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cancer-waitingtimes/