Almost 40 per cent of hospital admissions involve non-emergency patients who have been on a waiting list, mostly for a surgical operation. At any one time, about 1 million people are waiting for admission in England and a further 75,000 in Wales. Although the average time patients wait once it is decided that admission is necessary is just three months, in 2001/02 one in every ten patients waited more than nine months.
Many trusts have successfully reduced the longest waiting times. They have been assisted in this by national bodies, such as the NHS Modernisation Agency in England or Innovations in Care in Wales, and by provision of additional capacity in DTCs (diagnosis and treatment centres) and primary care, or through the Patient Choice Initiative. Nationally in England, the proportion of longer waits has been falling for some years. Total waiting lists, which remained stubbornly long, were reported to have fallen below 1 million in the final quarter of 2002/03. In Wales, list sizes are bigger than in England in relation to the population, waits are longer and both are still rising.
This review is written primarily for trust managers, but is also intended to be accessible to a wider audience. It is based on data collected by the Audit Commission from all NHS trusts providing acute services in the summer and autumn of 2002, for use in its local Acute Hospital Portfolio audits.