A change in the way the waiting list in England is calculated means some patients are no longer counted in the overall total.
The waiting list used to cover all the main types of NHS treatments and procedures, whether they were carried out in hospitals or in other locations, such as care homes, clinics and schools.
But new guidance, introduced by NHS England in February, means key treatments by community services are no longer included in the overall waiting list, and are instead reported separately.
This change is reflected in the figures for patients waiting for treatment just by community health services, which jumped from 962,040 in January to 1,000,218 in February.
The increase was driven mainly by a rise in waits for paediatric treatments, which went up from 84,307 to 105,765.
NHS England said the change in the way the waiting list is reported “primarily impacts community paediatric and paediatric neurodisability specialities”, with a “more limited impact” on other services.
Community health services cover treatments and procedures that are delivered mainly in people’s homes, including care homes, as well as in clinics, schools, other care facilities and community hospitals.
Around 36,000 treatments have been excluded from the overall waiting list for February due to the new guidance, with a further 7,000 likely to be removed in the next few months once all NHS trusts have implemented the change to their data.
Some of the patients who are waiting longest for treatment will be covered by these changes, and this is likely to have had an impact on the main hospital waiting list, which shows 9,969 people had been waiting more than 18 months to start routine treatment at the end of February, down from 14,013 in January.
This figure had previously risen six months in a row.
The main hospital waiting also list shows that an estimated 7.54 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of February, relating to 6.29 million patients, down slightly from 7.58 million treatments and 6.29 million patients at the end of January.
NHS England added that when the changes to the reporting of community services are taken into consideration, the overall waiting list in February “remained stable compared to the month before”.