Analysis shows two-thirds of patients in England’s busiest hospitals are waiting more than 18 weeks for routine procedures.
The overcrowded NHS’s own rules state that anyone referred for treatment by their GP must be seen within that timeframe.
But MailOnline can today report that only 14 of the more than 150 trusts meet that target.
The full results of our shock survey, which includes hip surgery waiting lists, A&E queues and cancer treatment targets, can be viewed via our search table.
Our audit exposing the perennial NHS crisis comes after Sir Keir Starmer described the £160bn-a-year service as “broken”.
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The prime minister warned that the system must be “reformed or destroyed” and pledged to carry out the “biggest overhaul” of the neglected system since its birth in the 1940s.
It followed a damning report by Lord Darzi, a pioneering surgeon and former Labour health minister, in which he concluded that the NHS was in a “critical state”.
Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust recorded the worst waiting list performance of any major hospital in the country in July.
Sixty-two percent of patients receiving treatment at the trust waited longer than 18 weeks – the NHS target for non-urgent care.
A total of 36,034 patients were stuck in the system, waiting for procedures such as hip and knee replacements and 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).
At NHS hospitals caring for people in the community, the situation was even worse.
Only one in fifty patients at Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust was seen within 18 weeks, while the total number of patients waiting was just under 300.
According to NHS guidelines, 92 per cent of patients should receive treatment within 18 weeks of referral.
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Of the more than 150 trusts in England that have achieved this target, 14 are specialist centres.
Tens of thousands have faced waits of well over 18 weeks, with about 290,000 waiting for more than a year, according to the latest data.
Nationally, the waiting list is more than 7.6 million people.
This affects 6.4 million individual patients, more than one in ten people in England. Some patients are waiting for more than one procedure.
The crisis has led some to travel abroad for surgery, while others have cashed in their pensions and plundered their family savings to avoid the long NHS queues.
But even Britons who may need life-saving treatment are facing delays.
The national target is that 76 percent of emergency department patients should be seen within four hours of arrival.
Although this target was achieved nationwide in all emergency departments last month, only 11 of the 122 large emergency departments met the target.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust’s large ED had the lowest percentage 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 had to wait too long.
This was followed by the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (41 percent) and The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (43 percent).
Eleven hospitals met the NHS target of treating more than three-quarters of patients within four hours, but only two hospitals achieved the previous standard of 95 percent.
These were Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (95 percent) and Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (96 percent).
However, these hospitals had the lowest number of visits to major emergency departments, just under 4,000 per month.
But some patients were lucky and only had to wait four hours in the emergency room.
MailOnline’s analysis found that almost one in 10 patients at some hospitals had to wait more than 12 hours before being seen.
Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s A&E fared worst. Of the almost 7,000 total visits in August, more than 9 per cent, more than 600 patients, had to wait 12 hours.
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Those data are all based on “trolley waits” – the time between when doctors decide a patient needs to be admitted and when they are given a bed. Figures that record patients from the moment they arrive at the ED paint an even bleaker picture.
Across all NHS hospitals analysed by MailOnline, 1.5 per cent of patients had to wait longer than 12 hours.
Even if a patient has waited more than 12 hours before a decision was made about his or her treatment, this does not mean that he or she has had no contact with doctors at all.
Separate NHS figures on waiting times for cancer care also showed poor performance.
NHS guidelines state that 85 per cent of cancer patients should be seen within two months of an emergency cancer referral. However, this target has not been met nationally since December 2015.
National data shows that in June, only 67.4 percent of patients were treated within two months of an emergency referral for cancer.
But some trusts reported levels that were lower.
Of the hospitals 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 patients starting treatment during this period.
This was followed by the Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Cambridge with 47 per cent and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust which also achieved a result of 47 per cent.
Only 20 of the almost 150 NHS care homes this website analysed met or exceeded the national target.
