Patients waiting to have NHS operations could lose promise of being seen in 18 weeks, documents reveal

Patients waiting to have an operation on the NHS could lose the promise of being seen within 18 weeks as health bosses consider replacing the target with an average instead, it has emerged.

According to hospital documents, seen by the Health Service Journal, the new waiting-time target for NHS patients is expected to be changed from the current 18 weeks to an average wait of 8.5 weeks.

Experts say shifting the emphasis from an individual target for every patient to an average across all patients would amount to relaxing the targets at a time when the overall waiting list has grown to more than 4.4 million people.

Hospitals are currently expected to see and treat 92 per cent of their patients within 18 weeks of being referral, but the target has not been hit since March 2016.

The Conservative Party manifesto published at the weekend did not commit to specific targets and instead said it would “study carefully the recommendations” of a review of waiting times being carried out by NHS England.

The NHS is field-testing new targets at 12 hospitals, including Northampton General Hospitals Trust, where board papers said: “The target average wait is expected to be 8.5 weeks from referral although this has not yet been set. The current average at NGH is 11 weeks.”

NHS England said no final decision had been made but it had previously made clear its desire to scrap the 18-week target in a report earlier this year.

Dr Rob Findlay, director of NHS planning company Gooroo and an expert on waiting times, said: “Patients want to know how long they will wait, not how long the average person has been waiting so far.”

He said the existing 18-week target was equivalent to an average wait of eight weeks.

“This is probably a relaxation compared with the current 18-week target, and the government should take flak for lowering standards,” he said.

The Royal College of Surgeons said it was supportive of trialling new measures and “open minded” about potentially changing the target – but only if there were a “clear evidence base” that it would be beneficial for patients.

Final recommendations from the NHS to the government are expected in March, with the four-hour accident-and-emergency target also at risk of being scrapped.

NHS England believes an average wait would help to reduce waiting times for all patients compared with a simple threshold that, once breached, can mean hospitals have no incentive to see those patients more quickly than those still beneath the 18-week limit.

An NHS England spokesman said: “Testing and engagement with clinicians and patients on the best measures of short waits for routine care is ongoing, and it is completely untrue to claim that any decisions whatsoever have been made on any particular measure, including a mean wait.”