NHS experiences worst A&E waiting times on record

Nearly 13,000 patients waiting more than 12 hours for treatment

A&E waiting times worst on record (PA)

The NHS in England experienced its worst A&E waiting times since records began last month, with nearly 13,000 patients waiting more than 12 hours.

The record-breaking figure of 12,986 patients waiting over 12 hours is up from 10,646 in November 2021.

Meanwhile, the number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has also risen to a new record high – hitting 6 million at the end of November 2021. This is the highest number since records began in August 2007.

The number of people having to wait more than 52 weeks to start treatment stood at 306,996 in November 2021, down from 312,665 in the previous month but up 60 per cent compared to November 2020.

However, patients waiting more than two years continued to rise with 18,585 recorded in November compared with 16,225 in October. This comes as the NHS faces a target to eliminate all two-year waits by March 2022.

The figures come as hospitals continue to battle with extreme pressures this winter due to the Omicron variant wave, with trusts across the country declaring critical incidents and standing down planned operations because of staff shortages.

NHS staff absences soared during December and January as Omicron drove higher levels of sickness. Latest figures from NHS England on Thursday revealed 40,031 staff were off due to Covid as of 9 January, which was up from 39,142 the week before.

While A&Es across the country struggled with demand during December, just 73 per cent of patients were seen within four hours and at major emergency departments just 61.2 per cent were seen within this target - both represent the worst performance on this measure since records began.

Across all department types some 120,218 people waited at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission in December, slightly below the all-time high of 121,251 in October.

NHS England has said ambulance services dealt with the highest ever level of life-threatening calls during December – responding to an average of 82,000 category one calls.

On average, the ambulance response times for these life-threatening calls was just over 12 minutes, with the longest wait up to 22.

For emergency but non-life threatening calls (category two), such as suspected strokes or suspected heart attacks, patients were waiting 53 minutes on average with the longest wait just under two hours – the longest on record for this category.

Ambulance services pressures have been driven by delays in handing over patients to hospitals. According to weekly NHS England data, published Wednesday, there were 7,948 delays lasting more than 60 minutes last week. This is despite all hospitals being asked to “immediately stop” all handover delays in October.

Wes Streeting MP, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for health and social care, responding to the new data, said: “Our health service went into this wave of Covid infections with 6 million people on waiting lists for the first time ever. Thanks to a decade of Tory mismanagement, the NHS was unprepared for the pandemic and didn’t have any spare capacity when Omicron hit.

“It’s not just that the Conservatives didn’t fix the roof when the sun was shining, they dismantled the roof and removed the floorboards. Now patients are paying the price, waiting months and even years for treatment, often in pain, distress and discomfort.”

Professor Stephen Powis, the NHS national medical director, said: “Omicron has increased the number of people in hospital with Covid at the same time as drastically reducing the number of staff who are able to work.

“Despite this, once again, NHS staff pulled out all the stops to keep services going for patients – there have been record numbers of life-threatening ambulance call outs, we have vaccinated thousands of people each day and that is on top of delivering routine care and continuing to recover the backlog.

However he added staff aren’t machines and with Covid absences almost doubling over the last two weeks NHS staff are “determined” to get back to providing more routine care.