The number of people waiting to start NHS treatment in England has hit 6.5m after wait lists grew by 100,000 in a single month, according to official data.
The latest data shows the number of patients awaiting the start of treatment at the end of April 2022 was 6.5m patients – up from 6.4m at the end of the previous month.
Of those, 323,093 patients were waiting more than 52 weeks and 12,735 patients were waiting more than 104 weeks.
For patients waiting to start treatment at the end of April 2022, the median waiting time was 12.6 weeks, up from 12 weeks at the end of March 2022.
The figures show more than two million people have been added to the waiting list since the start of the pandemic, when around 4.4 million people were already on the list.
Commenting on the figures, David Hare, chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), said: “Despite patients facing ever longer waits for treatment, a recent IHPN survey of our members has found that local NHS systems are asking the majority of independent providers to deliver the same or even less NHS activity in 2022/23 than pre-pandemic, with a quarter of independent providers not being involved in any conversations with their local NHS systems about how to tackle the backlog of care.
“Bringing down waiting times is the public’s number one priority for the NHS but without urgent action, there is a real risk of 2022 becoming a lost year in which NHS waiting lists keep growing while independent sector capacity goes unused.”