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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Equity, waiting times, and NHS reforms
— retrospective study | | Author(s) | Zachary N Cooper, Alistair McGuire, S Jones |
| Journal title | British Medical Journal, vol 339, no 7722, 19 September 2009 |
| Pages | pp 673-675 |
| Source | www.bmj.com |
| Keywords | Surgery ; Admission [hospitals] ; Socio-economic groups ; National Health Service [reorganisation] ; Longitudinal surveys ; England. |
| Annotation | The numbers of days waited from referral to surgery from 1997 to 2007 in the National Health Service (NHS) in England were measured for 427,277 patients who had elective knee replacement surgery, 406,253 who had elective hip replacement, and 2,568,318 who had elective cataract repair. The distribution of changes in waiting times between socioeconomic groups (based on the Carstairs index of deprivation) were also analysed as an indicator of equity. Mean and median waiting times rose initially and then fell steadily over time. By 2007, variation in waiting times across the population tended to be lower. In 1997, waiting times and deprivation tended to be positively related. By 2007, the relation between deprivation and waiting times was less pronounced, and, in some cases, patients from the most deprived fifth were waiting less time than those from the most advantaged fifth. Many people had feared that the Government's NHS reforms would lead to inequity, but inequity with respect to waiting times did not increase; if anything, it decreased. Although proving that the later stages of these reforms - which included patient choice, provider competition and expanded capacity - were a catalyst for improvements in equity is impossible, the data show that these reforms, at a minimum, did not harm equity. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-091109204 A |
| Classmark | LKA: LD:QKH: T4: L4:5SR: 3J: 82 * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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