Hospital waiting lists in Wales see record drop in January

Hospital waiting lists in Wales have seen a record drop as the latest figures indicate the total number of patients waiting has now fallen for eight months in a row. There were 713,048 patient pathways - the steps from referral to treatment - on waiting lists in January, nearly 28,000 fewer than the previous month. The figures suggest a £120 million investment by Welsh government to specifically target the problem is paying off. But by some measures waiting time are actually up - the number of patients waiting longer than the target times for both diagnostics and therapies has risen to the highest on record since 2024. Likewise, the performance against the 62-day target in cancer care has dropped to 57% - 3.7 percentage points lower than the previous month and moving away from the goal of 75%. But in that same month, there was a rise in the number of patients referred with suspected cancer and in those being told they did not have cancer. Both figures give an insight into the volume of people being seen by the service for the first time. The Welsh government said the extra 187,000 outpatient appointments that health boards had delivered, and 37,000 cataract operations to date, were