The number of people waiting for treatment through the NHS in England increased slightly to 7.21 million at the end of January, the highest number recorded by the service.
Around 13,000 more people were added to the waiting list for treatment in January, taking the total up to 7,213,436. It was at 4.4 million before the pandemic hit in February 2020.
The median wait for treatment also nudged-up to 14.6 weeks compared to 14.4 weeks in December and 13.1 in January 2022.
The latest data showed signs that those with the longest waits were getting treatment, although 1,122 patients had still been waiting more than two years.
The figures showed 45,631 people had been waiting more than 18 months, this was down 17% from 54,882 in December.
And 379,245 patients were waiting more than a year, down almost 7% from 406,035 at the end of last year.
Recovery plan falling short
Earlier this month MPs on the Public Accounts Committee were highly critical of the government’s plans to recover the NHS service.
They warned the first year of NHS England’s three-year recovery programme was already falling short of expectations, that targets are likely to be missed.
They highlighted “serious doubts” about some targets and feared that others were “unachievable”.
These concerns were backed-up by data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which millions of people had felt forced to go private to fund some of all of their treatment due to waits for NHS treatment.
It’s research also found NHS backlogs and delays were also affecting time off work and even causing people to go off on long-term sick leave.
‘Stubbornly high’ pressures
In its analysis of the figures The King’s Fund noted there had been encouraging signs that some areas of NHS performance are improving with the number of people waiting more than 18 months falling by more than 40% in the past 12 months.
But it warned that overall pressures within the NHS remained “stubbornly high”.
Senior analyst David Maguire said: “There is also still lots of uncertainty over what pressures the NHS will face in coming months, with waits for emergency care getting worse and delays in discharging hospital patients still much higher than we would expect to see, and the potential for more sustained industrial action by growing numbers of NHS staff which will have a significant impact on NHS care.
“There is a real risk that as spring approaches we begin to slip into thinking that the NHS crisis will be over, but the sad reality is that the NHS is in a never-ending winter where pressures are persistent and long-standing.
“To truly begin to break this cycle, the government must provide the funding the NHS needs to turn the upcoming NHS workforce plan into a genuine opportunity to recruit and retain more staff.”