More patients are waiting for hospital treatment, and for longer

The growing pressure on elective services at hospitals in England has been laid bare by new figures showing that over 360 000 more people were waiting for inpatient or outpatient treatment in January 2014 than in the same month last year.

The latest quarterly monitoring report from the healthcare think tank the King’s Fund shows that 9.6% of patients waited longer than 18 weeks for inpatient treatment in January.1 Although this was just within the target for 90% of inpatients to be seen within 18 weeks of referral, this is the highest proportion of patients waiting longer than 19 weeks since June 2011.

The report …