Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to reduce waiting times for orthopaedic operations in the last 12 months; and whether waiting times for such operations have reduced in the last 12 months.

NHS England publishes monthly data on referral to treatment waiting times to report performance against the right that patients have to start consultant-led treatment within a maximum of 18 weeks from referral for non-urgent conditions. These data show that average median waiting times for patients on a waiting list to start trauma and orthopaedic treatment in admitted patient or outpatient settings were 7.4 weeks at the end of December 2015 and 8.1 weeks at the end of December 2016.

Maintaining waiting time performance is a key objective in the Government’s Mandate to NHS England for 2016-17. Both NHS England and NHS Improvement are providing support and challenge to National Health Service commissioners and providers to reduce waiting times for hospital treatment.