Sherwood Forest Hospitals: all the key numbers for the NHS Trust in December

The figures come as new research suggests waiting lists across England are unlikely to shrink this year.

NHS England figures show 47,223 patients were waiting for non-urgent elective operations or treatment at SFH – which runs Mansfield Community, Newark and Sutton’s King’s Mill Hospitals – at the end of December, up slightly from 47,006 in November, and 38,616 in December 2021. Of those, 835, 2 per cent, had been waiting for longer than a year.

The median waiting time from referral at an NHS Trust to treatment at SFH was 12 weeks at the end of December, up from 11 weeks in November.

Nationally, seven million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of December.

A new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank suggests waiting lists are unlikely to fall significantly in 2023. The IFS said while “real progress” had been made in eliminating waits of two years or more, it would require a “truly remarkable” increase in treatment rates for waiting lists to drop.

Max Warner, a research economist at the think tank, said: “To turn things around would require unprecedented double-digit growth in treatment volumes over the next two years.”