Health Services: Children and Young People

(asked on 1st September 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to reduce treatment waiting times for children and young people.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 6th September 2023

Cutting National Health Service waiting lists, including for elective child health services, is one of this Government’s top priorities.

To support elective recovery, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity. Steps taken include increasing capacity, seeking alternative capacity in other trusts or the independent sector and engaging with patients to understand their choices.

We met our target to virtually eliminate long waits of two years or more for elective procedures in July 2022. We also virtually eliminated waits of over 18 months by the end of June 2023, a reduction of over 94% from the peak of 125,000 in September 2021. Our next ambition is to eliminate waits of 65 and 52 weeks.

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