24 February 2006
Eight pilot projects have been set up to look for ways of tackling NHS bottlenecks that threaten the government's 18-week waiting time target.
The projects, announced by the Department of Health this week, will bring together primary care and hospital trusts in a number of areas to develop systems and working practices that will speed patients' progress through the health service.
Currently, patients should be on the waiting list no longer than six months. But the clock starts ticking only when they are placed on a hospital doctor's inpatient waiting list. The time spent waiting for outpatient appointments is measured separately, while waiting times for diagnostic tests are not collected.
All this is due to change by December 2008, with a single door-to-door 18-week waiting target.
But DoH studies have uncovered logjams in the system while patients wait for tests. It has moved to increase NHS capacity by, for example, contracting private firms to provide scans.
The eight pilot projects, in east Kent, Gateshead, Huntingdonshire, southeast London, Nottinghamshire, Oldham, Exeter and Bedfordshire, will examine further ways of cutting waiting.
Revealing the sites, health minister Rosie Winterton said they would initially develop ways of measuring referral to treatment times before going on to reorganise the way patients move through the system so they can meet the 18-week target.
The target represented a big challenge, Winterton said. 'The NHS is ending hidden waiting lists for things like diagnostics procedures and ensuring
the whole patient pathway is measured and managed as one.
'This, coupled with the choice of hospitals now offered to all, will give patients the type of access only previously enjoyed by those who could afford to pay for it.'
NHS Confederation chief executive Gill Morgan backed the pilots but warned that meeting the 18-week waiting time target would be challenging.
'It is a very tough target for the NHS to meet as it will require many organisations to redesign how patients flow through the system. It will need clinical as well as system change and there is no new money to allow the new services to be developed in parallel with existing ones,' she added.
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