Patients needing scans to be ranked on risk of becoming disabled

Patients awaiting a diagnostic test are to be assessed according to risk of becoming disabled as the service tries to prioritise in the face of huge backlogs.

NHS England guidance released yesterday said local teams should categorise diagnostic waits on a four-point scale so those in most urgent need are seen first. It said this would mean, “recognising that for less urgent or routine diagnostics, some patients may experience a delay”.

The diagnostics data for February showed 1.15 million people waiting for a test, compared to 1.08m in February 2020 – however, the proportion of people waiting more than 13 weeks rose from 0.6% in 2020 to 28.5% this year. The number of people on the list waiting more than six weeks also increased five-fold over the year.

No more than 1% of patients are supposed to wait longer than six weeks for a diagnostic test, under government waiting time standards.

The NHS England guidance puts diagnostics on the same footing as elective treatment, which has been organised according to clinical priority – P1 being the most urgent P4 being the least — since shortly after the pandemic hit last year.

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Source: HSJ, 13 May 2021