Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people were on the waiting list for (a) knee and (b) hip operations on the NHS in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement.
Such information as is available is shown in the following table. Hospital episode statistics are published by NHS Digital and give a detailed breakdown of the number of individual episodes of care by procedure, including knee and hip replacements, and waiting times between decision to admit and admission.
The numbers of people on a waiting list to start consultant-led treatment at the end of each month are published by NHS England for high volume specialties, such as trauma and orthopaedics, but not for individual procedures. The numbers of people waiting for knee and hip replacements in each of the last five years is therefore not held centrally.
Number of finished consultant episodes1 (FCEs) with a main2 or secondary3 procedure where a knee replacement4 or hip replacement5 has taken place in a National Health Service hospital, and the associated median waiting times in days from decision to admit to admission for these procedures6, 2011-12 to 2015-16.
| Number of FCEs | Average median waiting time in days from decision to admit to admission | ||
| Knee replacements | Hip replacements | Knee replacements | Hip replacements |
2011-12 | 67,751 | 91,067 | 89 | 83 |
2012-13 | 66,296 | 91,073 | 83 | 77 |
2013-14 | 66,882 | 93,915 | 80 | 76 |
2014-15 | 68,936 | 94,305 | 78 | 75 |
2015-16 | 66,974 | 92,380 | 81 | 76 |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital
Notes: