The number of people waiting for NHS care has hit a record 6.7 million, as A&Es reveal worst ever performance, new data shows.
The NHS’ backlog in care grew by 100,000 in June, up from 6.6 million, while the number of people waiting more than one year stood at 355,774, up from 331,623 the previous month.
Meanwhile, a record 29,317 people had to wait more than 12 hours in A&E departments in England in July from a decision to admit to actually being admitted, NHS figures show.
However, this is far lower than internal NHS figures obtained by The Independent this month revealing at least 50,000 patients waited for 12 hours after arriving to A&E, in the first two weeks of July.
A total of 7 per cent of patients in England were seen within four hours at A&Es last month, down from 72.1 per cent in May and the worst performance on record. The national target is for 95 per cent of patients to be seen within this time but this has not been met since 2015.
As ambulance services reported huge pressures last month official figures show ambulances in England took an 59 minutes and seven seconds last month to respond to emergency calls such as burns, epilepsy and strokes.
This is up from 51 minutes and 38 seconds in June, and is well above the target of 18 minutes. It is just short of the longest response time on record for this category of incidents, which is one hour, one minute and five seconds, set in March this year. Response times for urgent calls, such as late stages of labour, non-severe burns and diabetes, averaged.
The news comes as the NHS almost hit its target to eliminate the number of patients waiting 104 weeks by July.
More to follow…
