New figures expose year-long queues for NHS operations – Bob Blackman

72,595 people across London waiting over a year for treatment

New Government figures have for the first time exposed the actual waiting times patients face across London for hospital operations, and the stark regional variations patients face in accessing vital NHS care under Labour.

Analysis of the official figures shows how almost 500,000 people each year are forced to wait for over 12 months for hospital treatment, with 72,595 patients in London forced to wait over a year for operations after being referred by their local GP.

Ministers in Whitehall consistently claim that they have reduced waiting times for hospital patients, but they did not even collect actual waiting times until they had been in power for over ten years.

Commenting, Bob Blackman, said:

“These figures make shocking reading. For years, patients have been forced to hear Gordon Brown talk about how no-one waits more than six months for an operation. This is particularly galling for the 72,595 patients across London who we now know are forced to wait over a year.

“In Europe, waiting lists are unheard of. Labour have had ten years, and spent vast amounts of money bringing NHS funding up to the European average, for nothing like the same level of health care that patients on the continent receive.

“NHS staff work hard every day to deliver improvements in patient care, but they are held back by a top-down, target-driven culture imposed on the NHS by Gordon Brown. We need to take politicians out of the running of the NHS, and set doctors and nurses free to make the decisions about patients based on their need, rather than a central target.”

NEW GOVERNMENT WAITING LIST FIGURES

“Referral-to-treatment” waiting time data was published for the first time by the Department of Health on 7 June 2007. It measures the time from a GP referring a patient to a specialist for further check-ups to the point at which the patient is admitted to hospital for actual treatment.

The data is available at:

http://www.performance.doh.gov.uk/rtt/commissioner.html

These figures show only the number of patients who were waiting over a year in March: 25,750. This represents 12.4 per cent of all the patients admitted in March. Across a whole year, 3,957,732 patients are admitted – suggesting that almost 490,000 people are forced to wait over a year for treatment across a full 12 months.

Using regional figures, a similar calculation can be performed to show the number of patients waiting over a year in each region.

The figures rubbish the frequent assertions made by Tony Blair that no-one waits more than six months for operations. For example, “under the Government, waiting lists have fallen by something like 400,000. Whereas almost 300,000 people used to wait 15 months for their operations in 1997, no one now waits more than six months”

Hansard, 8 March 2006, col. 813.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060308/debtext/60308-04.htm