Ivan Lewis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-02-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average waiting time for an operation in (a) Pennine Acute NHS Trust and (b) Bolton NHS Trust was in the last year for which figures are available.

Jane Ellison

Patients have a legal right, set out in the NHS Constitution, to start consultant-led treatment within a maximum of 18 weeks from referral for non-urgent conditions. The following table shows the average median waiting time in weeks for patients whose wait ended during the month with an inpatient or day case admission to Pennine Acute NHS Trust or Bolton NHS Trust. Only a proportion of inpatient or day case admissions would have resulted in an operation.

Table: average median waiting times^{1, 2} in weeks for patients whose wait ended during the month with an inpatient or day case admission³, 2015

Source: Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times, NHS England

Notes:

1. Median waiting times are calculated from aggregate data, rather than patient level data, and therefore are only estimates of the position on average waits.
2. Until September 2015, adjustments were permitted for clock pauses, where a patient declined reasonable offers of admission and chose to wait longer. From October 2015, there is no longer any provision to report pauses or suspensions in waiting time clocks.
3. Not every admission to hospital is for an operation, but hospital episode statistics suggest that 94% of elective finished admission episodes involve some form of procedure or intervention.