§ Mr. Ashleyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list the specialties in rank order according to the length of the waiting time for (a) outpatient appointments and (b) in-patient treatment.
§ Mr. WhitneyI am sorry I cannot give the right hon. Member all the information he seeks. Information on the waiting time for outpatient consultation is not held centrally. The estimated median interval between the date a patient was placed on the waiting list and the date of admission to a National Health Service hospital in England, ranked by specialty, is given in the table for the latest year for which information is available centrally.
660W
NHS hospitals in England, non-psychiatric and non-maternity departments Specialty in rank order Estimated median waiting time (in weeks) of waiting list cases in 1983 Oral surgery 14 Ear, nose and throat 13 Traumatic and orthopaedic surgery 13 Ophthalmology 11 Plastic surgery 11 Orthodontics 10 Urology 8 General Practitioner (dental) 7 Cardiology 6 General Practitioner (other medical) 6 Gynaecology 6 All other specialist units 5 General surgery 5 Infectious diseases *5 Neurosurgery 5 Units for younger disabled *5 Genito-urinary medicine *4 Paediatrics 3 Rehabilitation 3 Rheumatology 3 Thoracic surgery 3 Dermatology 2 General medicine 2 Neurology 2 Radiotherapy 2 Diseases of the chest 1 Geriatric medicine less than 1 All specialties 7 * These estimates were based on a small sample number and should be treated with caution.