AQW 25593/11-15


Mrs Jo-Anne Dobson
Ulster Unionist Party
Upper Bann


Tabled Date: 11/09/2013
Answered On Date: 25/09/2013
Priority Written: No


Question:
To ask the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety to list the clinics which have been cancelled due to the annual leave of Health and Social Care Trust staff in each of the last twelve months, broken down by Trust.


Answer:
The Quarterly Outpatient Activity Return (QOAR), which is the present methodology for the collection of consultant-led outpatient activity, was introduced by my Department’s Hospital Information Branch from the beginning of 2008/09, as a direct result of a comprehensive review of collection of outpatient activity undertaken in 2007/08. Primarily the methodology changed from the reporting of the number of clinics held and cancelled to the reporting of the number of appointments held and cancelled.
Information on the number of hospital cancellations, in Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland, is collected and published broken down by regionally agreed reasons for cancellation. Cancellations due to the annual leave of HSC staff are sub-regional codes under the regional reasons ‘Consultant unavailable’ and ‘Medical Staff/Nurse Unavailable’.
It should be noted that the variable on the Patient Administration System (PAS) that provides the breakdown of the variable ‘reason for cancellation’ was not a mandatory field until March 2013 and as such the rate of coverage varied across Trusts.
Information on the number of consultant-led appointments cancelled by hospitals due to the annual leave of Health and Social Care staff, in each of the twelve months of the financial year 2012/13, is shown in the table overleaf. This is the latest position for which official statistics are available.
Table 1: Number of consultant-led appointments cancelled by hospitals due to the annual leave of Health and Social Care staff, April 2012 – March 2013
HSC Trust
2012/13
Apr-12
May-12
Jun-12
Jul-12
Aug-12
Sep-12
Oct-12
Nov-12
Dec-12
Jan-13
Feb-13
Mar-13
Belfast
1,150
716
977
1,982
1,383
794
766
942
910
959
973
1,196
Northern
477
170
167
370
232
177
201
241
207
127
451
366
South Eastern
540
257
281
411
542
361
308
262
405
448
401
441
Southern
148
109
183
169
85
145
140
61
169
130
127
147
Western
441
302
357
334
497
297
280
287
291
298
412
310
Source: HSC Trusts