Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many inpatient procedures have been completed in each month from 2024 to 2026; what assessment they have made of the contribution of robotic-assisted procedures to achieving the target of 65 per cent of patients waiting less than 18 weeks for elective care; and what data they hold on current waiting lists for robotic procedures.

Monthly inpatient procedure data is published regularly as part of the Hospital Episode Statistics for Admitted Patient Care, Outpatient and Accident and Emergency dataset. The number of finished consultant episodes with a procedure from January 2024 to February 2026 is included in the table below. Whilst the data is published, it is provisional and may be incomplete or contain errors for which no adjustments have yet been made. Counts produced from provisional data are likely to be lower than those generated for the same period in the final dataset. This shortfall will be most pronounced in the final month of the latest period, in this case February 2026. The following table shows the number of inpatient finished consultant episodes for each month from 2024 to February 2026:

Source: Provisional Monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for Admitted Patient Care, Outpatient and Accident and Emergency data, NHS England.

No formal assessment has currently been made on the contribution of robotic-assisted procedures to achieving the March 2026 target of 65% of patient pathways waiting less than 18 weeks to start first treatment.

The Elective Reform Plan, January 2025, outlined the productivity and modernisation efforts needed to restore 18-week referral-to-treatment standards. We will continue to utilise widespread advances in techniques and technology, including robotic surgery to deliver higher quality care sooner. In February 2026, performance against the standard for 92% of patients to start first treatment within 18 weeks of referral was 62.6%, 3.4% higher than a year earlier.

Data on the current waiting list for pathways involving robotic procedures is not held in the format requested.