NHS Activity - Two Million extra Appointments

What do the data say?

The government press office was quick off the mark to let us know that ‘over two million extra NHS appointments delivered early as trusts handed £40 million to go further and faster.’

The Prime Minister welcomed the figures published by NHS England, which show that between July and November last year, the NHS delivered almost 2.2 million more elective care appointments than the previous year.

The Prime Minister's Office doesn’t think it's worth linking to the original data. So, instead of taking the figures as read— as the MSM does—TTE thought we’d take a peek.

We started with the Consultant-led Referral to Treatment Waiting Times Data. The referral to treatment waiting times peaked in December 2023 and are back to about average, with 4.4 million still waiting more than 18 weeks. The number dipped in December 2023 (4.3 million) and began increasing again in April 2024 (4.4 million).

About 95,000 more patients were waiting for treatment in December 2024 than in the same month in 2023. Howe…