Number of patients waiting over a year for NHS treatment doubles to 100k in just months

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Without additional staff and facilities, we risk losing the progress that has been made over the summer in restoring non-Covid services as emergency pressures surge.” The NHS England data also shows urgent cancer referrals were down 15 per cent compared to the same month last year. “The implications of this are extremely worrying.” Hospitals have been set a target by NHS England to restore services back to 90 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by the end of this month and on Wednesday NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said hospitals were on track to achieve this. An NHS England spokesperson said: “Hospitals are carrying out more than a million routine appointments and operations per week, with around three times the levels of elective patients admitted to hospital than in April, as they continue to make progress on getting services back to pre-Covid levels including scanning services which are delivering millions of urgent checks and tests. On cancer services, NHS England said: "Cancer clinicians worked hard to ensure that despite the disruption and acute pressures from covid, around 85 per cent of cancer treatments continued during the pandemic with over 246,000 people receiving treatment and more than 870,000 referred for checks since the start of March.