CX Waiting time for 1st appointment

[Claire Yorks]

Assuming that the figures that I have been given by one of the NHS administrators are correct it seems that the number of people waiting for a 1st appointment at CX is 2,300 and growing monthly and the waiting time for that appointment is a minimum of 2 years.

[Christine]

Really?! That's quite shocking. I thought it was bad when I had a 7 month wait from being referred in late 2011, but two years is awful. It's nice that the waiting times for existing patients between appointments have reduced noticeably as they were getting quite out of hand, but that's a hell of a price to pay.

[SarahG]

I was referred in Sept 2011 and waited 14 months, of which 8 months was in the queue to process my paperwork and be put into the waiting list, and then six months on the list proper.

That's not counting the two months I was stalled because the Welsh NHS sent the confirmation of funding before the actual referral, breaking their process and leaving me pending awaiting confirmation of funding! That fiasco only got resolved when I gave a friend a lift to CX and was able to relay information from the Welsh NHS who I had on the phone, directly to CX admin staff and vice versa.

Going up from 14 months to two years for 2013 referrals seems consistent if it was 7 months for 2011.

[Christine]

I guess I should qualify my post as being the referral time from the gatekeeper: the time from my appointment with my GP to my first appointment at CX was also about 14 months, though some of the time between my GP and the gatekeeper was wasted looking up private options, since none of the private hospitals she sent enquiries to bothered to reply. We hadn't heard of Transhealth or Gendercare at the time.

But then again I skipped some of the waiting to see the gatekeeper as I was already involved with the local mental health team, and a handy professor knew him personally so was able to refer me without any need for tortuous assessments and paperwork being lost. So altogether my wait may have been a little longer than average at the time, or perhaps just average.

[Denise Anderson]

Unless the other GICs are able to get bigger capacity NHS England will allocate the bookable appointment slots to the clinic that technically is big enough to take them and that's CX, even though as we can see the demand is outstripping supply... and with no more money available in the NHS England it's gonna get tough...