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PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Ophthalmic Services: Children (22 February 2016)

Question Asked

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average waiting time for an outpatient paediatric ophthalmology appointment was in 2014-15.

Asked by:
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (Labour)

Answer

The information is shown in the following table.

Information on outpatient paediatric ophthalmology appointments in 2014-15

Median waiting time in days for a first appointment1

53 days

Number of appointments that were cancelled by the hospital

36,533

Number of appointments that were cancelled by the patient

33,448

Number of appointments that the patient did not attend

65,436

National average unit cost of a first appointment2

£118

Sources:

Hospital episode statistics, Health and Social Care Information Centre

Reference costs, Department of Health

Notes:

1Waiting time is defined as the time in days between the date the referral request was received and the date of the first appointment, whether it was attended or not.

2Defined as a consultant-led single-professional first appointment. Separate data are collected are collected on non-consultant-led, multi-professional, and follow-up appointments.


Answered by:
Alistair Burt (Conservative)
26 February 2016

Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.