NHS postponed 195 000 appointments during latest strike, data show

The NHS in England saw 195 000 appointments postponed during the four days of strike action by junior doctors last week, official data show.1

NHS England said 27 361 staff weren’t at work because of industrial action during the peak of the 96 hour walkout, which ended at 7 am on Saturday 15 April. But it said the figures did not give the full picture, as a high number of entries from the workforce data were missing.

In the previous junior doctors’ strike, in March, there were 175 000 postponements across three days.2

The NHS’s national medical director, Stephen Powis, said the figures laid bare the “colossal impact” of …