18 week wait
 The Department of Health has launched a listening exercise in response to its discussion document ‘Commissioning an 18 week patient pathway’, which looks at reducing the length of the patient pathway from first contact with the GP to decision on treatment.
In the 18 week timeframe, the patient will attend an outpatient appointment with a consultant, have undergone any imaging and/or second opinion from another consultant and return to have their follow-up appointment with all their results. If they do not attend the follow-up, they will get a second appointment date, which has to be within the 18 weeks.
To enable this to all happen, imaging waiting times will need to be no longer than about four weeks. There are opportunities to suspend or stop the clock, for ‘complex cases’ for example, but it is important that managers and staff look at the document and respond with comments by 8 December, when the listening exercise will close.
Click here for the document and the response form.
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