The NHS provides over 12 million new outpatient appointments each year, as well as around 31 million follow-up appointments. Outpatient departments see more patients each year than any other hospital departments and so the performance of outpatient services has a major impact on the public's perception of the overall quality, responsiveness and efficiency of the health service.
Information relating to outpatient activity, in particular the time that patients wait before they are seen and the number of patients waiting for an appointment, has only been routinely reported by English NHS trusts to the DoH since 1995. The NHS Plan contains targets to shorten waiting times progressively, which are producing improvements. After rising for several years, the number of patients who have been waiting more than 13 weeks for their first appointment is now declining sharply.
In this review, performance is assessed in four key areas:
- patient experience
- demand and capacity
- efficiency
- management of outpatient services