Managing to the RTT target
A deeper dive into the incentives created by various elective waiting time targets, compared with patient-centred booking.
Filter blog posts
You can filter out our blog posts below by a category relevant to yourself.
A target 8.5 week average RTT wait?
Will one kind of "managing to the target" simply be replaced by another?
Gooroo Planner upgrade: tactical activity planning for operational managers
Now you can edit week-by-week activity directly in the Profiling screen, and watch waiting times rise and fall as you work. This and other goodies in the latest upgrade.
RCEM: Bed occupancy – time for a new message
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) kindly invited me to speak at their Policy Forum. My case was not so much that 85% is the wrong answer, but that bed occupancy is the wrong question.
Biggest ever waiting list as general election looms
The best way for the next government to reduce waiting times will be steadily and patiently, by keeping up with demand. Not with a blitz of waiting list initiatives.
RTT waits at 24 weeks as long waits deteriorate sharply
August saw a sudden increase in elective waiting times, putting at risk the NHS Long Term Plan's promise of choice at six months.
Majority of local services are now breaching 18 weeks
At the end of July, less than 49 per cent of hospital services were achieving the 18 week RTT target.
Hitting RTT target now almost ‘a minority sport’
Waiting times improved in June, but the underlying waiting list pressures kept growing as activity remained short of demand.
Waiting times reach 23 weeks as admissions falter
Elective waiting times have risen from 22 weeks to 23 weeks over the last 14 months, and there is still no end in sight. The target, of course, is just 18 weeks.
Should pilot sites ‘go dark’ while testing new A&E measures?
The arguments for 'going dark' look weak, compared with the damage to official statistics and public confidence in them.