Patients waiting longer than the standard for elective admission

Measurement of the breaches of the 12-month target for an elective inpatient or day case admission throughout the year and the measurement of the breaches of the 9-month target for an elective inpatient or day case admission as at 31 March 2004

Rationale

Public consultation prior to the production of the NHS Plan indicated that the public wanted to see reduced waiting times in the NHS. The NHS Plan set the target to have no patients waiting longer than 12 months for an inpatient appointment by March 2003, and no patients waiting longer than 9 months by March 2004. Urgent cases will continue to be treated in accordance with clinical need.

Thresholds

Legend
Achieved		0.10% or less
Underachieved	-	Greater than 0.10% and less than or equal to 0.30%
Significantly underachieved	x	Greater than 0.30%

If trusts have smaller numbers of patients (less than 5200 in the denominator of the indicator construction) then different thresholds apply to them. The thresholds in these small number of cases are double the usual values.In addition, trusts with very small number of breaches (2 or less for inpatients, 5 or less for outpatients) are considered to have achieved the target for the purpose of ratings.