Returning NHS waiting times to 18 weeks for routine treatment

Returning NHS waiting times to 18 weeks for routine treatment: The scale of the challenge pre-COVID-19
Health Foundation Long Read 22 May 2020

• As the NHS plans to start to recover services, this long read looks at the context in which planned treatment will recommence. Specifically, it looks at what would have been needed – if the NHS were operating within a ‘business as usual model’ – to return to delivering the standard of 92 per cent of patients being treated within 18 weeks, given the waiting lists and waiting times backlog that had built up by January 2020.