Two-thirds of patients at England’s busiest hospitals have waited over 18 weeks for routine procedures, analysis shows.
Under the swamped NHS’s own rulebook, anyone referred for treatment by their GP has should be seen within that timeframe.
But MailOnline can today reveal only 14 out of 150-plus trusts meet that target.
Full results of our shock probe — covering waiting lists for hip ops, A&E queues and cancer treatment targets – can be viewed through our search table.
Our audit laying bare the eternal NHS crisis comes after Sir Keir Starmer described the £160billion-a-year service as ‘broken’.
The Prime Minister warned it must ‘reform or die’, vowing to undertake the ‘biggest reimagining’ of the dishevelled system since its birth in the 1940s.
It followed a damning report by Lord Darzi, a pioneering surgeon and former Labour health minister, which concluded the NHS is in a ‘critical condition’.
Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust recorded the worst waiting list performance of a major hospital in the country in July.
Sixty-two per cent of patients on the trust’s books had been waiting more than 18 weeks – the NHS target for non-urgent care.
A total of 36,034 patients were stuck inside its system waiting for procedures like hip and knee replacements as well as cataract surgery.
Similar figures were recorded at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (56 per cent) and London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust (53 per cent).
Things were even worse in NHS trusts caring for people in the community.
Only one in 50 patients at Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust were seen within 18 weeks, though the total number of patients waiting was just under 300.
NHS guidelines set out that 92 per cent of patients should be treated within 18 weeks of being referred.
Of the 14 trusts out of the 150-plus in England that met this target, a number are specialist centres.
Tens of thousands have faced waits far longer than 18 weeks. About 290,000 have been waiting over a year, according to the latest data.
Nationally, the size of the waiting list is above 7.6million.
This refers to 6.4million individual patients, over one in 10 people across England. Some patients are waiting for more than one procedure.
The crisis has prompted some to travel overseas for surgery. Others have cashed in pensions and raided family savings to beat lengthy NHS queues.
But even Brits needing potentially life-saving treatment are facing delays.
National targets state that 76 per cent of A&E patients should be seen within four hours of arrival.
While this was met nationally across all A&E departments last month, only 11 of the 122 major emergency care departments met the goal.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust’s major A&E recorded fewest proportion of patients seen within four hours (35 per cent).
This means, of the 9,000-plus patients who attended the service in August, two-thirds were waiting too long.
This was followed by the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (41 per cent) and The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (43 per cent).
While 11 trusts did meet the NHS’s target of seeing over three quarters of patients within four hours, only two trusts hit the previous benchmark of 95 per cent.
These were Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (95 per cent) and Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (96 per cent).
However, these trusts did have the lowest number of major A&E attendances, at just under 4,000 for the month.
But some patients were lucky to only have to wait four hours in A&E.
MailOnline’s analysis found almost one in 10 patients at some trusts had to wait over 12 hours to be seen.
Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s A&E fared the worst. Of the nearly 7,000 total attendances in August, over 9 per cent, over 600 patients, had to endure a 12-hour wait.
That data is all based on ‘trolley waits’ – the time between doctors deciding a patient needs to be admitted and them getting a bed. Figures that capture patients from the moment they arrive at A&E instead paint an even bleaker picture.
Across all NHS trusts analysed by MailOnline 1.5 per cent of patients had to wait in excess of 12 hours.
While a patient may have waited for more than 12 hours before a decision about their treatment is made that doesn’t mean they have had no interaction with medics at all.
Separate NHS figures on cancer waiting times also showed dire performance stats.
NHS guidelines state 85 per cent of cancer patients should be seen within two months of an urgent cancer referral. But this target has not been met nationally since December 2015.
National data shows the proportion of patients being treated within two months of an urgent cancer referral was only 67.4 per cent in June.
But some trusts reported levels below this.
For trusts that saw at least one patient, Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, which provides gynaecology services, reported the worst performance with less than one in five (18.6 per cent) of its patients starting treatment in this timeframe.
This was followed by the heart and lung specialist hospital Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Cambridge at 47 per cent and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust which also recorded a result of 47 per cent.
Only 20 of the almost 150 NHS trusts this website analysed met or exceeded the national target.