The summary table on pages 8 and 9 also gives a figure for all treatments, including those not separately covered in the tables. The Patient's Charter says that if you have to visit an outpatient clinic, you should have your first appointment within six months. People who need urgent treatment are given appointments very quickly. For less urgent cases, people may need to wait for an outpatient appointment. You can see from this table the percentage of patients between 1 January and 31 March 1997 who were given outpatient appointments within three months and six months of seeing their doctor.
Hospitals try to keep waiting times as short as possible.
The figures show how each hospital is doing. The higher the percentage, the better the hospital's performance. We chose 10 types of treatment for this table. These are treatments for general surgery, urology, trauma and orthopaedics, ear nose and throat, ophthalmology, oral surgery, gynaecology, general medicine, dermatology, and rheumatology. General medicine mainly covers diseases of the chest, digestive system and internal organs which do not need surgery.