Outpatients waiting longer than the standard

Measurement of the breaches of the 21-week target for first outpatient appointment throughout the year and the measurement of the breaches of the 17-week target for first outpatient appointment 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 21 weeks for an outpatient appointment, following a GP referral, by March 2003, and no patients waiting longer than 17 weeks 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.