This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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£4 million initiative to speed surgery
10/09/2002
A £4m initiative to speed up treatment for NHS patients
waiting for hip and knee surgery was announced today.
Over the next six months around 500 patients who have
been waiting for up to one year for a replacement hip or
knee will have the opportunity to have their operations
carried out in private hospitals around Scotland.
This is the largest investment by the NHS in Scotland in
recent years using the private sector.
Health Minister Malcolm Chisholm said:
"In our National Health Service, the interests of
patients always come first which is why I am very pleased
to make this announcement. We have always said that we will
use any resource available to reduce the amount of time
people have to wait for their operations.
"Our approach to this whole issue is entirely pragmatic
and will remain so. We have secured capacity within the
private hospitals over a sustained period so that we can
drive down orthopaedic waiting times and keep them
down.
"The most important aspect here is that these patients
will be able to get the operations they need at the
earliest available opportunity and then get back to living
their normal lives."
The NHS National Waiting Times Unit (NWTU) has
provisionally booked - at a discounted rate - all spare
orthopaedic capacity for major hip and knee operations in
Scotland's private hospitals.
NHS Boards and Trusts are today being informed by the
NWTU of their allocations. They will offer patients who
have been waiting longest the opportunity to have their
operations carried out as part of this initiative.
The money will be released on the understanding that
this measure will clear the backlog of patients waiting for
hip and knee replacements - with most of the board areas
having no-one waiting more than 9 months for such
operations by March 2003.
The NWTU has a specific brief to make best use of spare
NHS and private sector capacity to cut waiting times. In
the first three months of this year it facilitated an
estimated 2,000 operations across various specialties in
the private sector on behalf of the NHS. In June 2002 a
further £300,000 was allocated to three health boards
(Forth Valley, Lothian, and Argyll and Clyde) for treatment
of orthopaedic patients in the private sector.
Today's initiative is part of a wider drive to reduce
orthopaedic waiting times, which have been identified as a
specific problem by an Executive working group. More than
8,000 hip and knee replacement operations are carried out
by the NHS in Scotland every year.
The NWTU is also doubling the rate of hip and knee
replacements at the NHS National Waiting Times Centre at
Clydebank from 28 to 56 a month by the end of 2002 and
plans to increase numbers further and carry out up to 960
operations in a full year.
Mr Chisholm said: "Hip and knee replacement operations
are complex and expensive procedures and waiting times have
been a concern for us as well as for patients. This
initiative will make substantial inroads into removing the
longest waits and providing a firm foundation to maintain
progress in keeping orthopaedic waiting times down in the
future."
A total of £3,996,000 has been allocated by the
Executive to Trusts and Boards.
Argyll and Clyde £155,000
Ayrshire & Arran £210,000
Dumfries & Galloway £56,000
Fife £140,000
Forth Valley £285,000
Glasgow North £880,000
Glasgow South £560,000
Lanarkshire £320,000
Lothian £670,000
Grampian £200,000
Tayside £280,000
Highland £160,000
Borders £80,000
Boards and trusts will contract with their local or most
convenient private hospitals to carry out the operations
over the coming months. NHS Highland is using its money to
increase surgery within its own hospitals.
The private hospitals involved include Ross Hall and
Nuffield in Glasgow, Murrayfield in Edinburgh, Abbey Ayr,
Abbey Stirling, and Albyn in Aberdeen. The NHS has
effectively booked all spare orthopaedic capacity for major
hip and knee operations at discounted rates in these
hospitals for the next six months.