High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Thursday, August 28, 2008
Waiting Times
In 2002, there were over 20,000 patients with a treatment guarantee (those without an Availability Status Code (ASC)) waiting over 18 weeks for an inpatient or day case hospital admission. At the end of 2007, there were no patients waiting over 18 weeks.
Similarly, in 2004, around 70,000 patients without an ASC were waiting over 18 weeks for a first outpatient appointment. At 31 December 2007, this had reduced to zero.
The Scottish Government has established a National Indicator to achieve annual milestones for reducing inpatient or day case waiting times culminating in delivery of an 18 week referral to treatment time from December 2011. In the first instance a key milestone of achieving a 15 weeks maximum wait for both outpatient consultations and hospital admissions by the end of March 2009 has been set.
Source: ISD Quarterly Outpatient Waiting List Census and SMR3 Census
Note: Currently available statistics for the period up to the end of December 2007 do not deduct periods of unavailability from the overall waiting time.
ASCs were abolished from 1 January 2008 and new ways of defining, recording and measuring waiting times were introduced. Information derived from 'New Ways' allows periods of unavailability to be deducted from a patient's total wait.
New Ways statistics are classed as provisional, as they require some further work in order to improve their reliability. Statistics from the first two quarters of 2008 show a reduction in the number of inpatients / day cases waiting over 15 weeks from 1,899 in March 2008 to 1,668 in June 2008. Please note that the New Ways statistics are not comparable with the statistics shown in the table above.
Further Information