It does! But it also depends on your assumption about wait list shape. If there is about 15% referral growth over 5 years then the 4m figure would be about right. But that could easily be cancelled out by the wait list shape not restoring to 2013-16 levels.

But will it be enough to restore the statutory 18 week target? I don't think it quite gets there

Useful NHS wait list explainer by Full Fact's Leo Benedictus fullfact.org/health/nhs-wai… (NB: Averages such as medians are OK for time trend comparisons like this, but they are only about half the typical wait so mislead re patient experience insource.co.uk/average-rtt-wa…)

Full local analysis of elective waiting times, by trust by specialty, with click-through to further analysis. Click the tabs at top for maps and an overview of the potential to eliminate ultra long waits. All fully updated with February data. #nhswaits public.tableau.com/app/profile/ro…

My analysis of yesterday's elective waiting times data #nhswaits

Yes that is the data I would most like to see as well. The consultation implies that more data will be published as soon as data quality (accuracy, completeness) permits. In the meantime there is always the FoIA. Perhaps we could one day serve ourselves from OpenSAFELY?

Rob Findlay @ Insource NHS England Yes I think they have been very good about communicating the change in both the press release and the spreadsheet

Commendably clear from NHS England 'Changes were made to the way community paediatric waits were reported this month, moving them to the community health services dataset... With this change considered, the waiting list in February remained stable' england.nhs.uk/2024/04/nhs-st…

The change caused by the omission of community services is also well explained by NHS England Stats in the press notice england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-… - well done to them #nhswaits I still disagree with the change though - it reduces scrutiny of and protection for these long waiters

The numbers of long waits are not comparable between Jan and Feb because of the removal of community services from the data. However we were expecting 78wk+ waiters to fall by about 1k because of the change, and it fell 4k, so 3k of that may be genuine improvement #nhswaits

The RTT waiting list shrank 36k in Feb to 7,539,716 patient pathways BUT this is entirely explained by 40k community services pathways disappearing from the data. To their great credit NHS England Stats have made the discontinuity very clear england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-… #nhswaits

New RTT waiting time data for England just out at england.nhs.uk/statistics/sta… #nhswaits Detailed national analysis will follow in HSJ, and local analyses tomorrow at gooroo.co.uk/reports/ (including your local outlook for 65 weeks)