HC Deb 09 March 1988 vol 129 cc238-9W
Mr. Simon Hughes

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will estimate for each district health authority within Greater London(a) the current length of time an individual would be expected to wait for a hip replacement operation and (b) the number of individuals currently waiting for a hip replacement operation who have been on the waiting list for (i) up to one year, (ii) between one and two years, (iii) between two and three years, (iv) between three and four years and (v) over four years.

Mr. Newton

None of the information requested is available centrally. Information on in-patient waiting lists is collected by specialty of treatment and not by intended method of treatment-operation. A one in 10 sample of hospital discharge records provide data about the waiting experience of patients who have been treated, but at district level the sample is too small to provide reliable estimates for hip replacement operations.

Regional information for 1985—the latest year for which data are held centrally—is given in the table.

Estimated median interval in weeks between the time a patient was placed on the waiting list and the date of admission to NHS hospitals for total hip replacement and other arthroplasty of hip, Thames regions, 1985
Region Time
North West Thames 13
North East Thames 18
South East Thames 23
South West Thames 26

Median Waiting Time (in weeks) of waiting list cases treated, by specialty and region, NHS hospitals, England 1985
Specialty Northern Yorkshire Trent East Anglian North West Thames North East Thames South East Thames South West Thames
All Non-Psychiatric Specialties 7 8 8 8 5 6 7 8
General Medicine 2 2 3 3 2 1 1 1
Neurology 2 3 5 5 1 3 2 2
Rheumatology 3 4 2 4 1 2 1 1
General Surgery 5 6 5 5 4 5 5 5
Ear, Nose and Throat 14 13 15 12 11 11 11 12
Traumatic and Orthopaedic 10 9 15 14 9 13 15 12
Ophthalmology 11 14 13 11 13 9 11 12
Urology 6 7 7 9 6 7 8 8
Plastic Surgery 12 12 9 13 6 9 12 12
Thoracic Surgery 6 3 7 2 1 1 5 1
Oral Surgery 15 19 15 19 12 15 12 12
Gynaecology 6 6 7 6 3 5 5 7

Median Waiting Time (in weeks) of waiting list cases treated, by specialty and region, NHS hospitals, England 1985
Specialty Wessex Oxford South Western West Midlands Mersey North Western SHA's England
All Non-Psychiatric Specialties 9 8 8 8 5 7 5 7
General Medicine 1 1 2 2 0 3 3 2
Neurology 7 5 2 5 5 3 3 3
Rheumatology 2 11 2 4 3 2 1 3
General Surgery 6 5 6 6 5 5 3 5
Ear, Nose and Throat 15 11 13 11 9 15 15 12
Traumatic and Orthopaedic 17 12 15 12 8 11 6 12
Ophthalmology 14 18 13 20 9 11 11 13
Urology 10 8 7 10 8 6 4 8
Plastic Surgery 13 14 10 14 9 14 21 12