Hospitals: Waiting Lists

(asked on 21st March 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why figures for the Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS University Hospitals Trust were not included in the official figures of the number of patients waiting for treatment for more than a year.


This question was answered on 23rd March 2016

Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting time statistics are designated as National Statistics. This means that the statistics are produced according to sound methods, and are managed impartially and objectively in the public interest.

From time to time, for example when there are serious problems with patient administration systems, National Health Service trusts do need to temporarily suspend submissions of data for inclusion in the publication of National Statistics for reasons of data quality and completeness. Nine acute trusts did not submit data on referral to treatment waiting times for January 2016. For this reason, the published data on the number of patients waiting more than a year to start consultant-led treatment for non-urgent conditions may be understated. NHS Improvement is working intensively with these trusts so that they can begin submitting data again as quickly as possible.

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