§ Mr. Dobsonasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the modal average interval between the date a patient is placed on the waiting list and the date of admission to a National Health Service hospital for a total hip replacement or other arthroplasty of the hip in England for the last year for which figures are available and what were the longest and shortest waits respectively.
§ Mr. Whitney[pursuant to his reply, 21 January 1986, c. 133–34]: The estimated modal average interval between the date a patient was placed on the waiting list and the date of admission to a National Health Service non-psychiatric hospital for total hip replacement or other arthroplasty of the hip in England in 1983, the latest year for which figures are available centrally, was between eight and nine weeks. As information is held centrally on a sample basis, it is not possible to ascertain maximum and minimum waiting times precisely but in 1983 about 2 per cent. of the recorded waiting times in the sample were three years or more and about 2 per cent. were less than two weeks.