Speeches

Siobhain McDonagh – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Siobhain McDonagh on 2016-02-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many outpatient paediatric ophthalmology appointments were (a) cancelled and (b) missed because the patient did not attend in 2014-15.

Alistair Burt

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.