Patients wait twice as long for treatment

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Patients are waiting nearly twice as long to be admitted to Lothian hospitals for non-emergency surgery as they were in the late 1990s, according to NHS statistics.

The average wait has risen from 30 days in 1998 to 52 days this year, the new health service report states, despite a huge increase in NHS spending.

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The rise has been put down in part to growing numbers of patients being moved off “hidden waiting lists”.

That means many patients who take longer to treat - because they have missed appointments or have complicated medical needs - are being included on the main lists for the first time.

The report also showed longer waits - a rise from 40 to 49 days - for patients who are referred to the care of a specialist at an outpatient clinic.

NHS Lothian said the statistics did not reflect the experience of the vast majority of its patients, pointing out more than nine out of ten inpatients are treated within six months. But a patient watchdog and the Conservatives raised concerns about continuing long waits for some patients.

Margaret Watt, chairwoman of the Scotland Patients Association, said: “Everyone realises they have to wait for treatment, but 52 days is far too long.

“There are too many big problems repeatedly occurring in the Lothian region when compared to the rest of Scotland, and this can only be down to bad management of the NHS. It’s time for [health secretary] Nicola Sturgeon to start an investigation.”

Mary Scanlon, the Tory health spokeswoman, said: “It is incredible in Edinburgh and the Lothians that waiting times for inpatients have almost doubled in the same period that NHS spending in Scotland has also doubled. People are perfectly entitled to ask ‘where has this money gone’?”

The 52-day wait for non-emergency patients was a significant rise from the 43 days recorded a year ago. The Scottish average was 46 days, while the country’s largest board - NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde - recorded a 36-day wait.

The official NHS statistics use the median to measure the average wait to be admitted to hospital for non-emergency operations. That is calculated by finding the halfway point between the longest and shortest waits.

This method can be distorted by even a single patient facing an exceptionally long wait.

Jackie Sansbury, director of strategic planning with NHS Lothian, said: “It is important to realise that these figures refer to planned - or elective - procedures, which are not emergency situations.

“We have been working hard to cut the number of people given availability status codes and it is widely recognised that treating people who have been waiting for a longer period - for whatever reason - can have the impact of increasing the median wait figure.

“We have also modernised our system of administration at a number of sites to support good practice and recording. This has had an additional effect in increasing our median wait figures.

“Where previously patients were classified as an elective, which effectively started their clock, they are now classified as an emergency.

“This has removed a number of people who had very short waits from the calculations.

“This technical change, which has made no difference to how long patients are actually waiting, has significantly impacted in the median moving.”

She added: “Of inpatients, 92.6 per cent of people received treatment within 26 weeks, showing that we are successfully addressing long waits for patients.”



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