Hospital Waiting Times (Hansard, 20 June 1995)

§ Mr. Malone

Excellent progress has been made in reducing waiting times. Since 1987, when the waiting time initiative was first introduced, the national health service has almost completely eliminated waits of more than 18 months for in-patient or day case treatment, and the number of patients waiting more than a year for such treatment has fallen from around 210,000 to less than 32,000 today. The average time a patient has to wait has been cut from more than nine months to less than five months. In addition, we have recently introduced for the first time a standard for first out-patient appointments as part of the patients charter. All patients should be seen within 26 weeks of being referred by their general practitioner; nine out of 10 should be seen within 13 weeks.