NHS England sees worst month on record for A&E waiting times

Just 85.1% of patients attending A&E were seen within four hours in January – making it the worst month on record.

The latest figure for NHS England is down from 86.2% of patients in December, also a record low at the time, and is the worst performance since monthly reporting began in 2010.

The target for hospitals is 95% – a figure emergency departments have failed to meet since July 2015.

There were 492,231 emergency admissions in January 2017, an increase of 1.5% compared to January 2016, and a year-on-year rise of 3.3%.

It means 73,342 patients were not seen within the four-hour target.

And almost 1,000 people waited more than 12 hours to be admitted to A&E departments in January – the highest figure on record for trolley waits, when patients are put on trolleys or in side rooms while a bed is found for them.

The equivalent figure for January last year was just 158.

Meanwhile, the 85% target for patients to start cancer treatment within just over two months of an urgent GP referral was not met, with just 79.7% of people beginning treatment within the time frame.

Figures for ambulance response times – red calls, the most serious – were below standard and showed just 66.7% arrived within eight minutes. The target is 75%.

There was also a leap in delayed transfers of care – known as bed-blocking – with 197,054 delayed days in January this year compared to 159,641 in the same month in 2016.

Sky’s Senior Political Correspondent Robert Nisbet said: "The volume of demand is increasing as well across the board – ambulance call-outs up 7.6%, A&E attendances up 4.1%, emergency admissions up 3.3%.

"So you can see the pressure on the system.

"The Government will say January is always a busy month – but these are year-on-year comparisons and they are going in the wrong direction."

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he expected the NHS to make "tangible progress" towards meeting the 95% A&E standard in the next financial year.

"It’s not going to be overnight," he said.

"We have a Budget settlement which is supporting the social care system which is dealing with one of the big issues, namely the difficulties in discharging patients from hospitals which makes it difficult to get patients out of A&E departments.

"We have also put capital funding into the GP triage system – the streaming system – which we have seen work spectacularly at hospitals like Luton and Dunstable, who were able to get 96%, 97%, 98% even in some of the most difficult winter weeks.

"So some of the tools now have been put in place, but it is also going to take a huge focus from management and staff in the NHS.

"But we are absolutely committed to this target. We think it is the right thing for patients and the NHS."

Nisbet added: "I think a number of healthcare professionals would say that is going to be difficult to achieve."

(c) Sky News 2017: NHS England sees worst month on record for A&E waiting times