NHS Leaders in the North West have hailed the hard work of staff in the region after new figures showed overall waiting lists fell for the third month in a row in December, fighting the tide against prolonged periods of industrial action and increasing winter pressures hitting the region’s urgent and emergency care services hard towards the end of the year.

NHS England’s regional medical director praised the hard work and dedication of staff as new figures show the number of patients waiting for elective treatment in the North West of England fell by almost 5,000 in December, despite the NHS needing to reschedule 11,124 appointments due to industrial action.

The new figures published last week show that the region’s overall Covid backlog fell for the third consecutive month and is now down by almost 9,000 since October to a total of 1,100,842.

Dr Michael Gregory, Regional Medical Director for NHS England in the North West, said: “It’s testament to our NHS staff who, despite winter pressures and industrial action, including the longest strike in NHS history, continue to go the extra mile to ensure patients are seen as quickly as possible. It is a credit to their efforts that we have seen a drop in the number of patients waiting for treatment and improvements in our response times.

“It is thanks to hard work, planning and efforts to increase capacity that performance did not deteriorate overall when compared to last winter,” he said. “The latest data shows winter pressures continue to hit the NHS hard, with hundreds more flu patients in hospital every day compared to last year, and significant challenges discharging patients affecting our bed occupancy rates and the speed at which patients flow through hospitals.

“As ever, and especially with another period of industrial action by junior doctors on the horizon, I encourage the public to use our services in the right way to get the care they need in the quickest way, using NHS 111 to get advice on the best service for their condition, where they are unsure on which service to use.”

Nationally, NHS staff delivered more elective activity in 2023 than in any other year since the start of the pandemic – with more than 17.3 million people across the country treated.

The significant progress came thanks to robust winter planning that has seen more beds, new ambulances and the rollout of measures such as care traffic control centres, urgent community response teams and same day emergency care.

The monthly performance data and weekly winter data can be found on our website here.