Page last updated: 23-FEB-2010

Audiology - Background

 

In 2007, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing stated that

"A whole journey waiting time target of 18 weeks from general practitioner referral to treatment ... by December 2011"

with Audiology services to be measured as part of this '18 weeks: The Referral to Treatment Standard'.

Information relating to audiology waiting times in NHS Boards has been collected nationally since April 2007 with a revised dataset introduced in December 2008. The following information is provided in an aggregated form by local heads of audiology services. ISD does not obtain the detailed, patient based, information for audiology that it does for other hospital specialties, however systems are being developed to report progress towards the 18 weeks referral to treatment standard. Audiology data is under development and ISD is actively working with NHS Boards to improve the consistency, completeness and timeliness of these data.

Data Quality

As ISD only receives aggregate data from each NHS Board, it is not possible to fully validate statistics as for other Waiting Times information. However, some quality assurance is carried out comparing month on month figures, the distribution of the waiting times each month and comparison with activity and clearance times. Further details can be found in the Data Quality page.

Commentary

This is the second time that information has been published on Audiology Services waiting times. Information is presented below at NHS Board level for July to December 2009. The format of the data presented has been updated to include trend information showing a combination of monthly and quarterly data. Due to the data quality issues as described above, Scotland level figures are not available at this time as data are incomplete for some NHS Boards.

Figures are provided for patients waiting and patients seen at the census date for both adults and paediatrics (combined and separately), by stage of treatment:

             (i) for a first contact appointment
             (ii) from assessment to fitting of hearing aid(s)
             (iii) from assessment to treatment (where treatment is other than fitting of a hearing aid)
             (iv) from fitting of hearing aid(s) to review (this final stage is not subject to the 18 weeks referral to treatment standard)

Please see the Data Definitions section for more information.

We would appreciate any feedback you have on the design, content or layout of these data. Please email NSS.isdAudiology@nhs.net with any comments.