The Kent meningitis outbreak fuelled a record number of people visiting A&E in March, according to NHS England. Health service data showed there were 2.43million emergency department attendances last month — 16,000 more than the previous high in May 2024. NHS England said the Kent outbreak — which saw thousands of students offered preventative drugs and vaccines after two young people died — led to a “marked increase in demand.”
More than three quarters of patients were seen within four hours (77.1%), the best performance since July 2021. However, this fell short of a target of 78%. Some 46,000 people also waited over 12 hours from a decision to admit them to getting a bed.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said there were “still too many patients waiting far too long”. He added: “Despite record pressures and strikes, we have come within a cat’s whisker of the ambitious targets we set ourselves.
“The NHS is on the road to recovery, and my foot is pressing down hard on the accelerator.”
Meanwhile, the NHS waiting list fell for a fourth consecutive month to 6.11million patients waiting for 7.22 million treatments in February.
Some 62.6% were being treated within 18 weeks, with a target to increase this to 65% by the end of March.
NHS deputy CEO and medical director Professor Meghana Pandit said: “I am incredibly proud of the work that NHS staff have put in over the past year to get us within touching distance of our elective recovery target.
“Pressure on services remains very high, with more people attending A&E in March than ever before, following prolonged winter demand.”
Sarah Scobie, deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust think tank, said the NHS had made real progress but “the ‘sprint’ to improve waiting times is only the start of a marathon to come”.
She added: “Budgets are tight and spread across many different priorities, and big structural reforms lurk on the horizon.
“The challenge for the NHS will be whether improvements are sustainable or just a quick boost that soon fades away, as we have seen before.”
Tim Gardner, deputy director of policy at the Health Foundation, said the figures “show some signs of NHS recovery and reflect a huge effort by staff during a difficult winter, but cannot mask how far away services are from meeting the standards patients should be able to expect”.
He added: “Making further progress will require system-wide action to tackle the bottlenecks causing long delays in patients being admitted to and discharged from hospital.”