The NHS misses its new target for planned elective care

The NHS misses its new target for planned elective care I no longer understand the strategy for elective care in England.

For most of the past 20 years the approach was fairly straightforward. The priority was to improve access to planned elective treatments like routine hip and knee surgery. A new target was created to treat the majority of patients within 18 weeks of referral to place greater focus on this goal. And the target mattered: NHS hospitals would be fined if patients waited too long for care, and the term ‘waiting list initiatives’ entered the NHS lexicon as hospitals paid staff a premium to provide extra clinics or operating sessions over evenings and weekends to speed up access to treatment. The King's Fund