NHS waiting target ‘may be missed’

The government may miss its target to reduce waiting lists to 18 weeks, a new report has warned.

The report, by independent charitable foundation the King’s Fund, said that there are “many constraints,” which mean that the target to reduce patients’ waiting times from GP appointment to hospital treatment to 18 weeks by 2008, may not be met.

The report also warned the government to examine policies such as payment by results and the extension of patient choice, suggesting that they were “potentially destabilising”.

Even if the 18-week target was met, however, the Kings Fund said that it would not be the ‘end of waiting’ that the government claimed. The report said that the government also needed to look at the potential costs and benefits of reducing waits even further, as well as develop policies to remove variation in access to services and differences in the quality of clinical practices.

Anthony Harrison, author of the report said: "The government is moving in the right direction on waiting times but should use the next two to three years to prepare to go further. Waiting time targets are based on assumptions that are rarely made explicit: namely that the right people are being identified and referred for the right treatment at the right time.

"Yet we know that access to some non-emergency surgical treatments is lower for people from poorer communities compared to those who are better off, and that the clinical criteria by which patients are treated vary from area to area and even doctor to doctor. More work is needed to determine the scale of the current variations, the reasons for them and the policies likely to be effective in tackling them.”

However, the report acknowledged that much progress had been made in tackling hospital waiting lists. Labour inherited a waiting list of 1.3 million and a maximum waiting time of 18 months when it came to power in 1997. The number has now been reduced to 800,000.

However, King's Fund chief executive Niall Dickson said: "Nothing should be taken for granted. The sheer number of patients to treat, the worsening financial climate, the uncertain impact of payment by results and choice, and shortages of staff in key areas all present real challenges for the government and the NHS."

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: "We need to know how the 18 week target is going to be measured before discussing if the target will be met. The Government has a bad track record of producing a full and rounded picture when it comes to waiting times. A shorter wait in one area has led to longer waits in other areas. What we need is flexibility so that patients are treated according to need, not some political target. This would enable hospitals to fast-track more serious cases over non-urgent ones".

(KMcA/SP)