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University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) has been awarded £2 million in capital funding as part of the NHS Elective Care Capital Incentive Scheme, recognising significant progress in reducing waiting times for patients.

The scheme was introduced earlier this year to reward those NHS trusts making the greatest strides towards the national target of treating patients within 18 weeks of referral.

UHB achieved an 8.86 percentage point improvement in its referral-to-treatment performance between April and September 2025, placing it among the top eight trusts nationally.

The Trust met its end-of-year target of ensuring at least 60% of patients receive their treatment within 18 weeks of referral by October 2025, which was five months ahead of the national requirement.

At the same time, UHB has reduced the number of patients waiting a long time for treatment.

In just three months the Trust cut the number of patients waiting over a year for treatment by more than 50%.

At beginning of July 2025, 5,376 patients were already waiting over 52 weeks between their referral to the Trust and for their treatment to begin, and nearly 90% of those patients were yet to have their first appointment. By the end of September 2025, that waiting list had reduced to 2,678 and at the beginning of December 2025, it has fallen further to 1,790.

The Trust has also seen huge reductions in its total waiting list size. In April 2025, there were 107,924 patients on the waiting list. Now there are 95,464 on the waiting list, despite thousands of new patients being added every month.

This is the fourth largest waiting list reduction across the whole NHS.

NHS England’s Clinical Director for Elective Care, Stella Vig, said: “We set out the challenge earlier this year to Trusts to drastically bring down their waiting lists. This approach has seen eight of them make particularly impressive progress helping thousands of patients get the care they need more quickly.”

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting added: “NHS staff and leaders at these hospital trusts are leading the way to a brighter future for the NHS, so I want to recognise and reward their excellent work.”

Jonathan Brotherton, Chief Executive at UHB, said: “Our priority is to ensure every patient receives high quality and equitable care, which includes providing them with timely access to the right care when they need it.

“Thanks to the exceptional efforts of our teams, we have significantly reduced waiting times for patients' planned procedures. There is, however, more to do to reduce them further.

“It is excellent to see our teams at UHB acknowledged for what has been achieved so far, and this additional funding will go a long way to helping us deliver against the standards of care that are so important for our patients.”