The NHS delivered thousands of extra treatments in 2025, compared to the previous year. New data found that over 100,000 more treatments were delivered in March compared to the March 2024, with one month seeing over 1.5 million being delivered in total. The service has also worked towards slowly reducing the growing patient waiting list, with health authorities crediting the Elective Care Reform Plan for the progress.
- Labour promises £1.4 billion to cut NHS waiting lists in five years
- Government sets out to end NHS waiting list backlogs
- 40 million appointments delivered in primary care, despite declining budgets
‘Since day one, we have been clear it will take time to reverse the disastrous waiting list we inherited. But since July, real progress has been made – including over winter,’ said Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting. ‘Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff, we have now delivered more than 3.6 million extra appointments, helping hundreds of thousands of people get off the waiting list and get on with their lives.’
The improvement in treatment delivery comes in the midst of rapidly increasing demand. In March alone, over 1.8 million new referrals were added to the waiting list for hospital treatment. This is alongside an increase in cancer diagnoses, with over 200,000 all-clear or definitive cancer diagnoses being delivered within four weeks, contributing the NHS’ 28-day diagnostic goal.
‘The scale of demand that our frontline NHS teams are managing is enormous - today’s figures show that each month, they are having to not only deal with a historic backlog, but they are also working to keep up with the hundreds of thousands of new patients that need our care,’ said Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s National Medical Director. ‘In March, we saw a particularly sharp rise in referrals – yet staff still managed to deliver more for patients with 100,000 more treatments delivered and thousands more getting a timely diagnosis for cancer.’