Hospitals in England are dealing with 5 million more patients than 15 years ago. The number of emergency, planned and day-case patients has soared by more than 40 per cent since 2004, to 17.6 million in 2016-17. The ageing population, obesity crisis and diabetes have all been blamed.
People being treated as outpatients waited 11 days longer in 2016-17, with the average time to treatment jumping from 37 days in 2007-08 to 48 days.
Researchers at the University of York spelled out the pressure mounting on the NHS, which has seen emergency visits to A&E rise almost 9 per cent in a decade.
But they added that NHS ‘productivity’ had grown more than twice as fast as the wider economy.
The research includes figures showing ambulance calls rose 20 per cent in the five years to 2016-17. The number of people rushed through A&E leapt from just under 13.8 million a year in 2006-07 to more than 15 million in 2016-17.
But fewer emergency patients are being admitted to hospital, probably because many should have been dealt with by GPs and not ended up in hospital in the first place.
Total patient numbers rose by more than 5.2 million between 2004-05 and 2016-17. The figures show that NHS staff provided 16.5 per cent more care pound for pound in 2016/17 than they did in 2004/05, compared to productivity growth of only 6.7 per cent in the economy as a whole.
