A&E waiting times: will monthly reports make a difference?

There is always a temptation to believe politicians are gaming the system to make themselves and their policies look good or to cover up when all is not going well.

And so that temptation reared its head today when the Health Secretary said they were going to change the way they publish A&E waiting times.

After all, this last winter every Friday (publication day) seemed to bring even more dire news.

But I am persuaded by the idea behind the move to publish them monthly rather than weekly. There is, the Department of Health said, an inconsistency in the way performance data is published, with A&E waiting times appearing weekly, cancer times quarterly and no mental health waiting times at all.

Now, they will all come out monthly so there is more consistency. What was happening, we are told, is that the weekly figures were creating a less strategic approach with hospitals responding to what amounted to fluctuations. I think that means there were too many panic measures.

It was, too, less accurate by looking over a week rather than over a month. And by putting all the data together, it creates a better picture of the service as a whole.

This is not to say that there will be no more weekly winter A&E figures. They will remain and we will still be able to see how our local hospital is doing in the cold, dark months.

At the same time Sir Bruce Keogh, at NHS England, announced a change to the 18-week waiting times target. Again, the temptation is to believe this is to cover up too many breaches.

Again, it seems though it is to simplify a ridiculously complex system. Currently, the targets create perverse incentives for hospitals to ‘lose’ patients if they have waited beyond the 18-week period for either inpatient or outpatient treatments.

Now hospitals have to take the list as a whole, and not drop people off the list, meaning their target will be 92 per cent of patients treated within 18 weeks of referral from a GP.

Much easier to understand, though probably not that easy for hospitals to actually make it happen.

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