‘Extra appointments’ celebrated by government deliver ‘modest impact’ on waiting lists

The “4.6 million extra NHS appointments” championed by the prime minister and health secretary have only had a “modest impact” on reducing waiting list clock stops, a vital part of cutting the NHS’s elective care backlog, according to new analysis shared exclusively with HSJ.

Last month, the government announced that “NHS staff have now delivered 4.6 million extra elective appointments since July – more than double the 2 million the government promised in its first year”.

Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting commented that NHS elective waiting lists had dropped by “more than 260,000 since we took office”. He added: “This is not a coincidence – it is because this government has delivered on the Plan for Change and put in the work to finally get our NHS moving in the right direction.”

However, analysis by The Health Foundation shows the extra activity has produced a much lower impact on waiting list clock stops than could have been expected based on the ratio between the two measures in the previous year.

The research concluded the “extra 4.6 million appointments” would have resulted in 1.2 million extra “clock stops” between July 2024 and April 2025, if the NHS had continued to convert average appointments to completed pathways at the rate it had done between July 2023 and April 2024.

But the analysis shows instead only around 340,000 additional pathways were completed between July 2024 and April 2025.

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Source: HSJ, 11 August 2025