Responding to figures which he has obtained by way of Assembly questions Timothy Gaston said:
“Back in October I asked the Health Minister to provide the waiting time for a (i) hip replacement; and (ii) knee replacement, broken down by Health and Social Care Trust. I was shocked to discover that 273 people have been waiting more than four years for a hip replacement while when it came to knee replacements there were 722 with 355 in the Western Trust alone (question and answer here).
“However, from talking to patients and charities in the sector I gathered that they believed the situation to be actually much worse as these figures took no account of
the time taken to secure a first outpatient appointment to gain a place on the waiting list so I asked a follow up question of the Minister.
“The Minister has now advised me that the longest time a patient has been on a waiting list for an inpatient/daycase procedure, the corresponding specialty and the outpatient appointment for the same specialty is 551 (more than 10 years!) for an orthopaedics inpatient or daycase procedure and 260 weeks for an outpatients appointment (or 5 years). When it comes to other specialisms the situation is not much better and in some cases worse with a 554 week wait for a plastic surgery impatient appointment and 517 week wait for a general surgery outpatient appointment (see here).
“These figures expose the fact that while our waiting times are horrendous they are actually much worse than often suggested by the published data. Significantly, the Program for Government offers nothing more than platitudes on this issue and while it is claimed that a return of devolution would ensure local Ministers sorted out such matters, the tack record of Stormont is abysmal when it comes to health with waiting times growing year on year since devolution came back in the Paisley / McGuinness era.”