Every NHS hospital in England has been told to improve patient waiting times for planned treatment as the government has made hitting the 18-week target one of its key priorities for this parliament.<\/p>\n
By March 2026, the government wants to see at least 65% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks.<\/p>\n
To get there, every NHS trust has to either get to 60% or improve on its November 2024 figures by five percentage points – whichever is greater.<\/p>\n
That is just a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of achieving 92% by July 2029.<\/p>\n
Use your postcode to find out whether waiting lists are getting better near you.<\/p>\n
BBC Verify’s analysis included NHS trusts in England that had at least 5,000 people waiting for elective treatment in November 2024.<\/p>\n
Targets in other nations are different and the interim targets for next March set by the UK government do not apply.<\/p>\n
While Scotland aims for 90% of patients to be treated within 18 weeks of referral, in Wales the target is for 95% of patients to wait less than 26 weeks.<\/p>\n
In Northern Ireland, 55% of patients should wait no longer than 13 weeks for day case or inpatient treatment.<\/p>\n
Interactive tool produced by Alli Shultes, Rebecca French, Daniel Wainwright, Nick Triggle, Ollie Lux Rigby, Chris Kay, Adam Allen, Avi Holden and Rebecca Wedge-Roberts<\/p>\n
What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every NHS hospital in England has been told to improve patient waiting times for planned treatment as the government has made hitting the 18-week target one of its key priorities for this parliament. By March 2026, the government wants to see at least 65% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks. To get there, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}