The claim
“Hospital waiting times have risen month on month under this government”
Ed Miliband MP, Prime Minister’s Questions, April 27, 2011
The analysis
Back on the benches after their Easter break, David Cameron and Ed Miliband fired different sets of NHS statistics at each other. FactCheck calls them in for a check-up.
The Labour government’s set target was to make sure 90 per cent of patients were treated within 18 weeks of referral to their hospital from their GP.
When the last government started tracking performance of waiting lists in August 2007, 56 per cent of admitted patients and 76 per cent of non-admitted patients (aka outpatients) were seen within 18 weeks.
By the time the coalition took over in May 2010, the figure had risen to 93 per cent and 98 per cent, respectively.
But with the NHS now tasked with making £20bn of efficiency savings by 2015, the coalition has removed this old Labour target deeming it one that has “no clinical justification”.
Mr Cameron said today that waiting times have been “broadly stable over the last couple of years”. What’s more, he claimed: “If you look at the outpatient waiting times they actually fell in the last month”.
Scan the Department of Health’s monthly figures, and Mr Cameron is right. From January to February, the median wait (the time spent waiting by 50 per cent of patients on waiting lists) for non-admitted patients – or ‘outpatients’ – dropped from 4.8 weeks to 3.5 weeks. For admitted patients the median wait also dropped from 9.1 to 9 weeks month-on-month.
The DofH told FactCheck that the median time for both outpatients and admitted patients has been “relatively stable”, at around 4 and 8 weeks, respectively.
The figures do support this (see Table 3 here). And analysis of the stats by the health think-tank The King’s Fund also stacks it up.
Yet both the King’s Fund and the DofH point out that waiting lists do vary through the seasons – February fared better after a bad flu season, with beds full up and operations cancelled.
The DofH admitted today that the bounce in February did in part “reflect the severe weather seen in December and January”.
The verdict
Mr Miliband slipped up by quoting monthly waiting figures – which have actually improved January-to-February and remain above Labour’s target of 90 per cent.
However, the King’s Fund analysis picks out some devil in the detail – such as the fact that A&E waits alone have jumped to a record high, as Mr Miliband also mentioned today.
Perhaps he should have stopped there. If you isolate A&E waiting times, the third quarter of 2010/11 does show a 1.3 per cent rise in the waits over 4 hours. “Although the percentage remains relatively small, the last time it was higher than this was in 2004/5,” The King’s Fund said.
By Emma Thelwell
