10 October 2003
A High Court ruling on NHS waiting times is unlikely to have serious consequences for the health service, the NHS Confederation said this week.
Last week the court ruled that NHS patients facing 'undue delay' on waiting lists could seek operations in other European Union countries and claim the cost back from the health service.
It was predicted that the ruling, which reaffirms a principle established in the European courts, would 'open the floodgates' and put the NHS in serious financial disarray.
Yvonne Watts, 72, had a hip replacement in France and claimed that Bedford Primary Care Trust and the Department of Health should repay the £3,800 cost.
Mr Justice Munby ruled against her because her delay was too short. But he insisted that patients facing 'undue delay' could claim reimbursement.
He said undue delay was a period of much less than a year but more than the three or four months faced by Mrs Watts.
The confederation said predictions that a flood of patients would follow in her footsteps were wide of the mark, though chief executive Gill Morgan called for greater clarification of what constituted undue delay.
'The NHS Confederation doesn't believe that this ruling will necessarily have as large an implication as was initially suggested,' she said.
'Waiting lists are currently falling and patients will face great practical difficulty in organising their health care abroad. While waiting lists are coming down, the NHS is also moving increasingly to a system whereby individuals who have been waiting overly long for treatment can get treated abroad with NHS support.'
Ministers have set targets for the NHS in England to have no patient waiting longer than six months by 2005.
The British Medical Association welcomed the ruling, saying it reinforced doctors' belief that the time patients wait should be based on clinical need rather than targets set by politicians.
But it added: 'If NHS resources are used to treat patients abroad, it will be even less able to treat patients quickly at home. The BMA believes the way forward is to continue cutting waiting lists by increasing capacity in the UK.'
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