The claim
“Average waiting times from referral to treatment are at the same levels as last year. This is against a backdrop of rising demand for NHS services, so the low waiting times are a testimony to the hard work of NHS staff.”
Andrew Lansley MP, July 14, 2011
The background
What has happened to NHS waiting times in the year since the change of government in May 2010?
An email boldly promising: “Waiting times: the facts” has pinged through from the Department of Health.
It has been a year of claims and counter claims – with both David Cameron and Ed Miliband using different measures to come up with opposite conclusions about NHS efficiency under the Coalition, as FactCheck has previously shown.
With the official numbers in, FactCheck has duly rolled up its sleeves to perform the coalition’s first annual check-up.
The analysis
The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley must have been relieved to announce that, lo and behold, average waiting times in May 2011 were exactly the same – 8.4 weeks – as they were in May 2010.
But there are a few lists getting longer.
The number of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks has crept up slightly – from 1.8 per cent last year to 2.3 per cent in 2011.
The proportion of A&E patients waiting longer than four hours is still riding higher than at any time since 2004. The overall number of A&E patients waiting four or more hours only managed to drop from 3.52 per cent to 3.47 per cent in the final quarter of 2010/11 (quarter-on-quarter).
And the number of patients waiting for six weeks or longer for diagnostic tests is at its highest level since February 2008.
There were 100,000 more diagnostic tests in the in the three months to May 2011 than in the previous year. Rising numbers of diagnostic tests are just one of the growing demands pressing down on the NHS, Mr Lansley acknowledges.
And these figures predate David Cameron’s promise that he would not lose control of waiting times. “We will ensure they are kept low”, he said last month.
The Health Secretary is right that the overall picture for waiting lists remains “low and stable”. But he’s also right that, it is against a backdrop of rising demand for NHS services, “so the low waiting times are a testimony to the hard work of NHS staff”.
The question is, can the NHS maintain this performance? The health think-tank King’s Fund has uncovered a few sick notes.
The Kings Fund canvassed 49 NHS finance directors – two days after Mr Cameron pledged to not to lose control of waiting times – and found that more than half were “uncertain” of meeting their targets.
Professor John Appleby, chief economist at The King’s Fund, said that a quarter of the finance directors were concerned that the pressure to deliver £20bn of efficiency savings by 2015 could harm clinical quality.
Professor Appleby added: “While waiting times remain low in historical terms, the rise against key target measures since this time last year shows how difficult it will be for the NHS to meet the Prime Minister’s pledge to keep waiting times low as the spending squeeze begins to bite.”
Sir Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the NHS is now “creaking at the seams”.
“Our members are finding it difficult to cope with the increased demand for urgent care, and this has a knock-on effect on the ability of hospitals to cope with planned diagnostic tests, medical procedures and surgical operations.”
The verdict
The official data shows that waiting times overall are indeed “low and stable”. Waiting lists remain within Labour’s old 90 per cent target range – with 90.8 per cent of the 300,000 patients seen in May, seen within 18 weeks.
But this is down slightly from 92.9 per cent in the same month last year. And while average waiting times are the same as last year, at 8.4 weeks, the Health Secretary himself concedes, is a testimony to the hard work of the NHS staff.
The King’s Fund’s research and the President of the Royal College of Physicians show there is significant doubt among NHS doctors and managers alike that many of the government’s financial and clinical targets will be met.
Sir Richard Thompson from the RCP said: “Waiting lists could be the first indication that the NHS is not coping with effects of this inexorable rise in demand.”
FactCheck will be keeping its finger on the pulse.
By Emma Thelwell
