15 January 2026

  • Number of SaTH patients waiting for treatment falls by 30% in a year
  • More than six in 10 patients at SaTH now treated within the 18-week target – up by more than 17 percentage points in a year
  • While number of patients waiting for surgery falls by 6.5% across the Midlands, compared to 2.3% nationally

Patients waiting for planned treatment with The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) are being treated faster due to improvements to local NHS services.

A new Referral to Treatment Waiting Times Dashboard launched this week allows people to see waiting times in local hospitals across England – and track the progress of local systems working to improve the rate of treatment.

The new platform shows how the number of people waiting for treatment across all providers in the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin system has fallen by more than 21 per cent since last year, while the number of patients waiting longest (over a year or more) has fallen by almost 83 per cent in a year.

The progress came despite the NHS’s busiest ever year, with 431,000 attendances at Midlands emergency departments in December alone.

SaTH has reduced the number of patients waiting longer than a year for treatment by almost 98 per cent since November 2024 and reduced the overall number of patients waiting for treatment by 30 per cent in the last year.

The Trust is creating additional inpatient and acute assessment capacity at both Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital in Telford. This will improve access to urgent and emergency care and protect elective capacity during the winter months, and in the future.

Ned Hobbs, Chief Operating Officer, said: “The progress we have made is phenomenal and we are hugely proud of our clinical and operational teams who have worked tirelessly on improvements to reduce the length of time our patients are waiting for treatment.

“There is still more work for us to do, but we are striving to ensure that every patient has access to timely treatment. We are investing in additional urgent and emergency care capacity, and new equipment to further enhance productivity in outpatients, diagnostics and theatres.”

While waiting lists across the country have fallen by 2.3% since last year, the Midlands region has seen waits fall by over 6.5% over the same period – almost three times the national average, and more than double the next best regions (South East & North West – 3.1%).

The dashboard has been launched on the anniversary of the government’s elective reform plan which set out a range of measures designed to improve the delivery of elective care and tackle NHS waiting list backlogs.

Dr Jess Sokolov, Regional Medical Director for the NHS England in the Midlands, said: “We’re committed to reducing waiting times for local patients not just because faster treatment offers massive improvements to quality of life. But also because we see fewer patients needing urgent and emergency care when their health deteriorates waiting for much-needed surgery.

“Across the Midlands we have been working to bring diagnostic and planned services into more convenient community locations meaning hospitals can focus on patients who need urgent and emergency care.”

The Elective Reform Plan launched on 6 January 2025 includes several key measures to achieve this goal:

  • Empowering patients – giving them more choice and control over their treatment
  • Reforming delivery – working more productively and consistently to deliver more elective care
  • Delivering care in the right place – ensuring patients receive care in the right setting.

The plan also focuses on transforming diagnostic pathways, expanding the use of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs), creating new surgical hubs, and enhancing the NHS app to give patients greater choice and control over their treatment.

The Government aims to cut waiting times to 18 weeks by the end of this Parliament and to treat 92% of patients within 18 weeks by 2029.

Case study:

Mr Melvin Jones, aged 56, had a keyhole gall bladder operation at the Elective Surgery Hub at Princess Royal Hospital in Telford.

“It all went really well – it was exceptional and very good. I can’t fault anything to be honest. I had only been on the waiting list for two months.

Mr Jones, a farmer of Llanfair Caereinion, was first on the list in the hub and was operated on by Mr Saurav Chakravartty, a Consultant in Upper GI and Bariatric Surgery and Elective Hub Lead (PRH). He was back home by 6.30pm.