Patients waiting 12 hours or more in A&E 2015-2022

The number of patients waiting twelve hours or more has dramatically increased in recent years. In 2022, around 347,707 patients waited twelve hours or more compared with 1,306 in 2015.

NHS waiting times

Waiting times in the NHS have become increasingly high in recent years, especially starting the winter of 2022 with rates of hospitalization due to influenza surpassing those due to COVID-19. A national outbreak of Strep A infections put additional strain on the health service. Despite the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the median wait-times have far outpaced the peak reached in September 2020 of 48 minutes.

Staff shortages

The NHS was the worlds 7^th largest employer in 2022, employing more than 1.3 million individuals. Due to increasingly difficult working conditions and disputes over pay, the NHS is struggling to fill vacancies and had more than 110,000 in December 2021. Additionally, expenditure on staff as a share of total expenditure has fallen in recent years. A survey conducted in December 2021 found that more than 30 percent of NHS staff had thought about leaving the organization. 2022 and 2023 saw a record number of strikes across the UK in various sectors. Support for the strikes has generally been high, but none higher than support for NHS nurses who enjoyed 64 percent of public support as of November 2022.