NHS activity and performance summary: November and December 2019

Unscheduled care

Average daily A&E attendances decreased from the previous month, but were the highest of any December on record. The percentage of patients spending less than 4 hours in A&E was the lowest on record. The number of patients spending more than 12 hours in A&E was the highest on record.

The overall average number of daily calls to the ambulance service increased in December. The average daily number of the most serious calls (‘red’) increased to the highest on record and was over 100 for the first time. The percentage of red calls receiving a response within 8 minutes increased slightly from November. However, the 65% target was not met for the second month since the clinical response model was introduced.

The number of delayed transfers of care decreased in December.

Scheduled care

The number of patients waiting longer than the target time was similar for diagnostic tests but decreased for therapy services in November; average waiting times for both diagnostic tests and therapy services increased.

Referral to treatment performance was weaker than last month. The percentage of patients waiting less than 26 weeks decreased (the lowest since December 2017) and the number waiting longer than 36 weeks increased (the highest since January 2018). The average time waiting for treatment was the same as last month.

Over the year to November, there has been an increase in the number of patients newly diagnosed with cancer who have started treatment via the urgent suspected cancer route. But there has been a decrease in the number starting treatment not via the urgent suspected cancer route. Since last month, the percentage of patients treated within the target time for both urgent and not via the urgent route have decreased. The performance for those treated not via the urgent route is the lowest since October 2006. Experimental statistics for the single cancer pathway are also included in this release.