NHS willing to revise waiting-list targets

Addressing call for new model to measure success

The Chief Medical Officer has said the NHS would be willing to revise waitingtimes targets amid complaints they cost too much to meet and are diverting health workers from other priorities.

The move from Dr Catherine Calderwood yesterday came just a day after she visited Ninewells Hospital in Dundee to probe claims that accident and emergency response times were being manipulated.

Every patient in Scotland has been given a “guarantee” that they will be seen within 12 weeks of referral but the 100% target has never been met.

Health boards have complained that it is costing them a fortune trying to meet the last few percentage points, including calling in consultants at weekends at three times their daily rate.

The Royal College of Nursing recently complained that targets “can often skew clinical priorities and waste resources”, and called for a new, evidence-based model for measuring success, focusing on better outcomes for patients and health services.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Catherine Calderwood joined NHS Scotland chief executive Paul Gray at Holyrood’s Health Committee to scrutinise the NHS’s budget yesterday.

Mr Gray said the target should be looked at if it is “proportionately excessive and doesn’t deliver clinical benefit”, and Dr Calderwood said they would be willing to revise targets. He said: “The last percentage points of this target do cost money to meet and it’s also fair to say that some clinicians have questioned with me whether that far end of the target is absolutely clinically necessary to meet in every single case.

“But these points being made, I must nevertheless proceed on the basis of the legislation as I can’t do otherwise…To say that these are deflecting us from priorities, I wouldn’t like to go that far,” he added.

“I take the point that the committee is making that if the expenditure to reach the last fraction of a target is proportionately excessive and doesn’t deliver clinical benefit, then that may be something that we should look at.”