"The maximum wait from referral by a GP or optometrist to surgery will be 18 weeks. This will be implemented across the NHS in Scotland by the end of 2007" (Fair To All, Personal To Each, Scottish Government 2004). The spirit of this waiting time standard is that no patient should wait longer than a total of 18 weeks from receipt of referral to completion of cataract surgery.

At present, NHS Scotland lacks systems on a national basis to capture total patient journey information. A pragmatic interim solution has been to measure progress towards these targets by measuring and reporting the component parts of the journey.

The assessment part of the journey - patients waiting for cataract assessment at an outpatient clinic following a referral from a GP or community optometrist.
The treatment part of the journey - patients waiting for cataract surgery.

It is not possible to accurately measure the total journey time for each individual patient at this time. It should be noted that record linkage work has demonstrated that the majority of patients are listed for surgery very soon after their outpatient consultation (or pre-assessment linked with one stop systems), which offers a reasonable degree of confidence that this form of measurement does not hide a delay between outpatient assessment and addition to inpatient/day case waiting list.

As part of their local delivery plans, NHS boards were asked to provide cataract delivery trajectories that indicate the maximum wait their patients would be expected to wait for each of the two pathways, and to ensure that the maximum wait for both assessment and treatment pathways combined does not exceed 18 weeks. The planned journey time for each pathway varies a little across the boards. This is expected due to differing local service configurations such as outpatient clinic types (e.g. one-stop) and day case facilities.

Waiting times are adjusted to deduct periods where the patient is unavailable (e.g. for medical or social reasons). Patients who cancel or don't attend an appointment have their waiting times clock reset to zero. Further information .

CATARACT PATIENT JOURNEY: WAITING TIME FOR OUTPATIENT ASSESSMENT
ONGOING WAITS FOR PATIENTS ON WAITING LIST

These statistics will not be published at this time as they require some further work in order to improve their reliability. More information on data quality issues is available.

CATARACT PATIENT JOURNEY: WAITING TIME FOR SURGERY
ONGOING WAITS FOR PATIENTS ON WAITING LIST

The number of patients on list and the number waiting over local target will not be published at Scotland level at this time as some further work is required in order to improve the reliability of some boards' data. Data for the majority of boards are included in the spreadsheet linked to below.

Comparable information by NHS board of treatment is available below:

• Cataract patient journey; ongoing waits for patients on waiting list. Information for NHSScotland and NHS board of treatment (census dates 31 Mar 2008, 30 Apr 2008, 31 May 2008, 30 Jun 2008)  

The Scottish Goverment assess whether targets have been met by looking at the waiting times of patients waiting at the end of the month. These patients have not yet been seen, and their eventual completed wait may be longer than the target time even if their waiting time at the month-end was not. Equivalent information on completed waiting times is available on request from ISD.