In March 2023, a patient in an Accident and Emergency in England would spend approximately 70 minutes waiting before treatment would begin. After the wait times dropped due to COVID-19 effects, it reached a record high of 81 minutes in May 2021 and November 2021. The median wait time for treatment has been fluctuating since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Substantial waiting times experienced by patients

In the first quarter of 2021/2022 in England 83.4 percent of patients who attended A&E were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. This is below the NHS’s target that 95 percent of attendees to A&E should be seen within four hours. Since 2011, the share of patients seen within four hours has been declining. In addition, since 2016 there has been a marked increase in examples of patients waiting for more than twelve hours at A&E to be admitted, with a recorded high of 7,161 individuals in 2020/21 third quarter.

Increased number of attendances

The reasons behind the increased waiting times and the missed treatment targets could be partially explained by the increased number of people attending A&E. There were over 6.1 million attendances to the A&E department in England in the first quarter of 2021/22. This figure has been increasing since 2012, which means there is a greater strain on emergency services across the country. The large drop in number of attendances is reflected in wait times and with number of attendances rebounding again, wait times have also increased.

In October 2024, around 73 percent of patients who attended any A&E department (including major A&E, single specialty, and other A&E/minor injury units) in England were seen in four hours or less. This was well below the NHS operational standard, which states that 95 percent of attendees to an A&E department should be seen within four hours. The equivalent data for waiting times purely in hospital A&Es can be found here.

In October 2024, only 58 percent of patients who attended a hospital accident and emergency (A&E) department in England were seen within four hours. This is among the lowest monthly share of attendees seen within four hours in the provided time interval and is well below the target; that 95 percent of patients in A&E should be seen within fours of arrival. The last month in which the four-hour target was met was in June 2013. As shown in the graph, the share of patients seen within four hours has been decreasing, although it shows signs of increasing again. The equivalent data for waiting times in all A&Es can be found here.

Accident and Emergency Waiting Time Owner of the Intellectual Property Rights for this Dataset: Hospital Authority

The data presented in this table is for contextual purposes only as it does not include attendances for some minor injuries units in the Betsi Cadwaladr health board, where patient-level data cannot be obtained on a consistent basis as all other hospitals. Therefore the total number of attendances will be lower than those presented in the NHS Activity and Performance statistical release and associated StatsWales tables, as attendances in these publications are based on aggregated data that is collected from all hospitals. A widened scope of emergency department performance statistics are now published on the National Collaborative Commissioning Unit (NCCU) website, as management. This includes measures on the time from patient arrival to triage, the time from patient arrival to contact with a clinical decision maker and analysis of the patient’s discharge destination when they leave the emergency department. These will be updated every month on the same day as this National Statistics publication. Data Prior to January 2013 will not be directly comparable with data for January 2013 onwards due to a change in methodology. See notes in March 2013 release for more details (January 2013). While there are some small numbers in the data collected and presented, the information is not considered to be sensitive in nature and there is no identifying information presented.

The number of patients waiting twelve hours or more has dramatically increased in recent years. In 2022, around 347,707 patients waited twelve hours or more, compared with 1,306 in 2015. Updated quarterly data can be found here. NHS waiting times Waiting times in the NHS have become increasingly high in recent years, especially starting the winter of 2022 with rates of hospitalization due to influenza surpassing those due to COVID-19. A national outbreak of Strep A infections put additional strain on the health service. Despite the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the median wait-times have far outpaced the peak reached in September 2020 of 48 minutes. Staff shortages The NHS was the world's 7th largest employer in 2022, employing more than 1.3 million individuals. Due to increasingly difficult working conditions and disputes over pay, the NHS is struggling to fill vacancies and had more than 110,000 in December 2021. Additionally, expenditure on staff as a share of total expenditure has fallen in recent years. A survey conducted in December 2021 found that more than 30 percent of NHS staff had thought about leaving the organization. 2022 and 2023 saw a record number of strikes across the UK in various sectors. Support for the strikes has generally been high, but none higher than support for NHS nurses, who enjoyed 64 percent of public support as of November 2022.

Provisional Accident and Emergency Quality Indicators for England, June 2023, by provider This publication has been delayed to Tuesday 15th August due to data processing issues. Apologies for any inconveniences or impact this may cause The measures included in this publication report on data coverage in ECDS compared with the emergency monthly situation reports MSitAE published by NHS England and NHS Improvement. They also report statistics for total time in A&E, time to assessment, time to treatment, A&E attendances that left before treatment and unplanned reattendances within 7 days. Each report contains national figures and provider level figures. From the January 2023 release, the format of the publication was updated to open data format following a review and consultation. We are continuing to improve publications, please let us know if you have any feedback using the survey link below. Please send queries or feedback via email to enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk Author: Secondary Care Open Data and Publications, NHS England Lead Analyst: Emily Michelmore