Two-thirds of patients in England’s busiest hospitals have waited more than 18 weeks for routine procedures, analysis shows.
Under the overstretched NHS’s own rules, anyone referred for treatment by their GP must be seen within that timeframe.
But MailOnline can now reveal that only 14 out of more than 150 trusts meet that target.
The full results of our impactful research – covering hip operation waiting lists, A&E queues and cancer treatment targets – can be viewed via our search table.
Our audit exposing the perennial crisis of the NHS comes after Sir Keir Starmer described the £160bn-a-year service as “broken”.
The Prime Minister warned that it was necessary to “reform or die” and promised to undertake the “biggest reinvention” of the disorganised system since its birth in the 1940s.
This 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 any major hospital in the country in July.
Sixty-two per cent of patients registered with the trust had been waiting more than 18 weeks, the NHS target for non-urgent care.
A total of 36,034 patients were stuck within its system waiting for procedures such as 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 was seen within 18 weeks, although the total number of patients waiting was just under 300.
NHS guidelines state that 92 per cent of patients should be treated within 18 weeks of referral.
Of the 14 trusts out of more than 150 in England that have met this objective, several are specialist centres.
Tens of thousands of people have had to wait much longer than 18 weeks. Some 290,000 people have been waiting for more than a year, according to the latest figures.
Nationwide, the waiting list size exceeds 7.6 million.
This is 6.4 million individual patients, more than one in ten people across England. Some patients are waiting for more than one procedure.
The crisis has forced some to travel abroad for surgery. Others have collected their pensions and dipped into family savings to avoid the long queues at the National Health System.
But even Britons in need of potentially life-saving treatment are facing delays.
National targets state that 76 per cent of emergency patients should be seen within four hours of arrival.
While this was met nationally in all A&E departments last month, only 11 of the 122 major emergency departments met the target.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust’s main emergency department recorded the lowest proportion of patients seen within four hours (35 per cent).
This means that of the more than 9,000 patients who visited the service in August, two thirds waited 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 met the NHS target of seeing more than three-quarters of patients within four hours, only two trusts reached 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 had the lowest number of emergency room visits, just under 4,000 during the month.
But some patients were lucky enough to have to wait only four hours in the emergency room.
MailOnline analysis found that almost one in 10 patients at some trusts had to wait more than 12 hours to be seen.
The emergency department at Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust had the worst results. Of the nearly 7,000 total visits in August, more than 9 per cent, or more than 600 patients, had to endure a 12-hour wait.
All of these figures are based on “ambulance waits” – the time between doctors deciding that a patient needs to be admitted and them being given a bed. Figures that track patients from the moment they arrive at the emergency room, however, paint an even bleaker picture.
Across all NHS trusts analysed by MailOnline, 1.5 per cent of patients had to wait more than 12 hours.
Although a patient may have waited more than 12 hours before a decision was made about their treatment, that does not mean they have not had any interaction with doctors.
Separate NHS figures on cancer waiting times also showed dire performance statistics.
NHS guidelines state that 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 treated within two months of an urgent cancer referral was just 67.4 percent in June.
But some trusts reported levels below this.
Among trusts that saw at least one patient, Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, which provides gynaecology services, reported the worst performance, with fewer than one in five (18.6 per cent) of its patients starting treatment in this time period.
This was followed by the specialist heart and lung hospital Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Cambridge with 47 per cent and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust which also recorded a result of 47 per cent.
Only 20 of the nearly 150 NHS trusts analysed on this website met or exceeded the national target.