Has the NHS turned a corner? The winter crisis may be over, with pressure on the health service beginning to ease, but the pace of improvement is glacial. The latest performance figures for NHS England, published this morning, point to small improvements: waiting lists have flattened off and remain at 7.2 million; 12 hour waits for A&E finally fell; and ambulance response times have improved too.
The figures come a day after modelling by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on waiting lists suggested they will at most flatline this year before eventually beginning to fall. Under a worst-case scenario, waiting lists would keep climbing and pass 9.2 million people waiting for treatment in just over two year’s time. If treatment volumes (the number of tests and procedures carried out each month) increase and demand falls, the waiting list may peak by the middle of this year at around the current level.
Here’s everything the monthly NHS figures reveal:
1.
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