Waiting lists fall again
The number of people waiting to be admitted to hospital has continued to fall, according to statistics released today by the Department of Health.
They show that 861,700 people were waiting for an operation in July 2004, down from 974,400 a year ago.
The department hailed the figures as the lowest since 1987 and said they were a testament to increased investment in the NHS. However, the Conservatives said Labour was achieving its targets by putting untenable pressure on hospital trusts.
A breakdown of the department’s figures reveals that the number of patients waiting more than twelve months has risen from 37 to 98 since July last year.
However, there has been a startling decline in the number of people waiting nine to eleven months, which has fallen from 49,000 to just 183. That means just 281 people are experiencing the waiting times of more than nine months that the Government has pledged to eradicate.
A spokesman for the department said: “Waiting times overall are continuing to fall thanks to the hard work of staff and the investment and capacity we are adding to the NHS.”
He added that waiting list figures were the lowest since December 1987, and represented a decrease of over 280,000 since March 1997.
However, Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said Labour would do “almost anything” to ensure their targets were reached.
“In the past we have seen examples of trusts being driven to fiddle figures or distort clinical priorities and infection control procedures in order to meet Government targets,” he said.
“The Government’s determination to meet waiting list targets comes at what price for NHS patients? It’s time to put patients first”.
Of the 281 people waiting longer than nine months, 234 were reported by the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust.
The department spokesman said an internal investigation at the Brighton trust had found no evidence of lists being manipulated. However, an external investigation into waiting list management was taking place at the trust, and all patients would be treated before the end of the month.
He said: “We take any breaches of waiting lists extremely seriously, but this is very rare. The recent Audit Commission report into information and data quality in the NHS confirmed that, overall, waiting list data is sufficiently robust to enable reasonable judgements to be made about national trends in the number of people waiting and the length of time for which they have been on the list.”
