Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average waiting time is for a NHS hernia operation for patients in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England.

The information is shown in the following table. These data are from hospital episode statistics (HES) and measure the waiting time between decision to admit and admission to hospital.

They are not the same as the referral to treatment waiting times data that monitor delivery of the NHS Constitution right to start consultant-led treatment within a maximum of 18 weeks from referral for non-urgent conditions. These data do not include condition specific information such as hernia operations.

Median waiting time in days between decision to admit and admission to hospital for patients admitted for a main procedure of hernia, 2013-14

Source: HES, Health and Social Care Information Centre

Notes:

1. Main procedure is the first recorded procedure or intervention in each episode, usually the most resource intensive procedure or intervention performed during the episode. It is appropriate to use main procedure when looking at admission details, (e.g. time waited), but a more complete count of episodes with a particular procedure is obtained by looking at the main and the secondary procedures.

2. The following OPCS codes were used to identify hernia operations:

G23.- Repair of diaphragmatic hernia

R01.2 Fetoscopic insertion of tracheal plug for congenital diaphragmatic hernia

R04.6 Percutaneous insertion of fetal tracheal plug for congenital diaphragmatic hernia

T16.4 Repair of congenital diaphragmatic hernia

T19.- Simple excision of inguinal hernial sac

T20.- Primary repair of inguinal hernia

T21.- Repair of recurrent inguinal hernia

T22.- Primary repair of femoral hernia

T23.- Repair of recurrent femoral hernia

T24.- Primary repair of umbilical hernia

T25.- Primary repair of incisional hernia

T26.- Repair of recurrent incisional hernia

T27.- Repair of other hernia of abdominal wall

T97.- Repair of recurrent umbilical hernia

T98.- Repair of recurrent other hernia of abdominal wall

3. West Midlands is defined as the West Midlands Government Office Region (GOR) of treatment. These data are derived from the hospital provider code and indicate the GOR area within which the treatment took place