Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how long is the average waiting time for a double knee replacement operation on the NHS.

A count of elective¹ finished admission episodes (FAEs)² with a secondary procedure³ of bilateral (double) knee replacement operation, as well as the mean and median waiting times (days), for the 2016-17 financial year⁴ is provided in the table below.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital

This is a count of hospital activity, not individual patients as the same person may have been admitted into a hospital on more than one occasion.

Notes:

¹Waiting list. A patient admitted electively from a waiting list having been given no date of admission at a time a decision was made to admit.

Booked. A patient admitted having been given a date at the time the decision to admit was made, determined mainly on the grounds of resource availability.

²A FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.

³As well as the main procedure, there are up to 23 (11 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and 3 prior to 2002-03) secondary procedure fields in HES that show secondary procedures performed on the patient during the episode of care.

⁴HES figures are available from 1989-90 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage (particularly in earlier years), improvements in coverage of independent sector activity (particularly from 2006-07) and changes in NHS practice. For example, apparent reductions in activity may be due to a number of procedures which may now be undertaken in outpatient settings and so no longer include in admitted patient HES data. Conversely, apparent increases in activity may be due to improved recording of diagnosis or procedure information. Note that HES include activity ending in the year in question and run from April to March, e.g. 2012-13 includes activity ending between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013.