England’s best and worst performing hospitals for waiting times, cancer treatment and other key targets have been named on a new online dashboard intended to give the public more information on how local NHS services compare.

Trusts have been ranked by seven measures of performance that also include time patients spend in emergency departments or waiting for diagnostic tests.

While NHS commentators welcomed greater transparency, they warned that the “basic rankings” will not give people the full picture of how their local hospital is performing overall.

The rankings on these key measures come after Health Secretary Wes Streeting promised to tackle poor performance in the health service (Lucy North/PA)

PA Wire

The data used to create the league tables, which were published online by NHS England, has always been available.

However, this is the first time is has been presented in this format and in a user-friendly way.

– Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, based in Cheshire and Merseyside, topped the list of trusts with the highest proportion of patients in May whose treatment started within 18 weeks (97.4%), followed by the Christie trust in Manchester (95.0%) and the Royal Marsden in London (94.0%); the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Shropshire had the lowest (44.5%), followed by Countess of Chester (47.9%) and Milton Keynes University (49.1%).