A great below-the-line post in today's Guardian:


State of the NHS in May 2010.

Waiting times.

Median waiting time for inpatient was 8.9weeks.

Median waiting time for out patients 4.1 weeks.

Outatients waiting longer than 18 weeks fell from 23% in2007 to 2.5% by May 2010.

Inpatients waiting longer than 18 weeks 52% in2007 to 10% in May 2010.

In 2010 2.5million people were waiting for treatment within the NHS.

A&E waiting times were such that only 5% of admissions waited longer than 4hrs in 2010.

There were 152,000 hospital beds in the NHS in2010.

State of the NHS in 2019

4.9 million people on nhs waiting lists.

22% of people now waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment.

There are now 140,000 hospital beds in the NHS.

In 2019 a peak of 25% of people waiting more than 4hrs in A&E was achieved.

Few things.

I've chosen 2019 because it was pre-pandemic and so un-sullied by covid. Unfortunately every one of those measures has only got substantially worse.

It's proven really quite difficult to find separate median inpatient and out patients data for 2019 unlike 2010.