Patients waiting on 'invisible' lists

Patients are getting stuck for up to a year on invisible NHS waiting lists, it was claimed today.

In 73 of the 153 NHS Trusts in England surveyed it was found many people were not given an appointment for basic diagnostic tests on their condition for six months and others were being forced to wait twice as long.

A lack of radiographers to operate MRI and CT scanners is blamed for causing the logjam in the diagnostic process but patients waiting for the tests are not included in any government waiting list figures. Patients only enter official waiting lists when they are scheduled to have surgery.

The research, conducted by the Liberal Democrats, comes on the day of an announcement by NHS Chief Executive Sir Nigel Crisp about the latest official waiting list figures.

They are expected to show the number of people waiting for surgery fell last month to the lowest level since the Eighties.

The Government has promised that by 2008 nobody will have to wait longer than 18 weeks from being referred by their GP to being treated in hospital.

But Liberal D e m o c r a t h e a l t h s p o ke s m a n Paul Burstow said his party's research revealed the true picture of NHS waiting times.

His survey found patients were waiting up to six months or more in two out of five NHS Trusts for routine MRI scans. One in 12 trusts had MRI waiting lists of over a year.

Similarly, about one in 10 reported waiting times for CT scans of six months or more.

Mr Burstow says part of the problem is a lack of trained staff to perform the scans - vacancies for radiographers have risen by a third since

2000. A third of the trusts said availability of scanners or old equipment was another barrier.

Mr Burstow said:

"Whenever the Government says it has cut waiting times it may have cut the wait for treatment but there are still an awful lot of people on these hidden waiting lists just waiting to get a diagnosis.

"For some we may well find that the diagnosis comes too late to actually save their life."

The government statistics announced today are understood to show official waiting lists are down by 11 per cent from last year and are 35 per cent below their peak of six years ago. Figures released at the end of September showed 856,600 people were waiting for treatment in England, down 4,500 from the previous month.

There were 300,000 fewer people on waiting lists than in March 1997. Professor Adrian Dixon, of the Royal College of Radiologists said staff shortage was a "big problem" which has been made worse by financial restrictions.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said the Government was working to increase staffing and had invested " massively" to increase scanner capacity.

He said: "There are currently 230 MRI scanners installed in the NHS in England, compared to 110 machines in 1997, representing a 99 per cent increase in total numbers. By December 2004, this will increase further to approximately 276 MRI scanners. There are 1,600 (13 per cent) more NHS radiographers than in 1997."