Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many patients have had to wait longer than (a) two weeks, (b) five weeks, (c) 10 weeks and (d) 15 weeks between being assessed for hip replacement surgery and that surgery taking place.

Information is collected representing the time from decision to admit to treatment for knee and hip replacement surgery. The latest available data is for 2015-16 and is shown in the following table.

A count of finished admission episodes (FAEs) ¹ with an eligible time waited from decision to admit to treatment for main² or secondary³ procedure for hip and knee replacements (and revisions) with waiting times (in days) of two and five weeks (14 - 35 days), between five and 10 weeks (36 - 70 days), between 10 and 15 weeks (71 - 105 days) and longer than 15 weeks (106 days and over) in England for 2015-16

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital, Activity in English National Health Service Hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector

Notes

1. Total admissions with eligible time waited information

The total number of eligible admissions includes waiting list, booked admissions and planned (elective) admissions. A waiting list admission is one in which a patient has been admitted electively into hospital from a waiting list, having been given no date of admission at the time a decision to admit was made. Booked admissions are those in which the patient was admitted electively having been given a date at the time it was decided to admit. Planned admissions are usually part of a planned sequence of clinical care determined mainly on clinical criteria, which, for example, could require a series of events, perhaps taking place every three months, six months or annually. A FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.

2. Main procedure

The first recorded procedure or intervention in each episode, usually the most resource intensive procedure or intervention performed during the episode. It is appropriate to use main procedure when looking at admission details, (eg time waited), but a more complete count of episodes with a particular procedure is obtained by looking at the main and the secondary procedures.

3. Secondary procedure

As well as the main procedure, there are up to 23 (11 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and three prior to 2002-03) secondary procedure fields in HES that show secondary procedures performed on the patient during the episode of care.