Question reference: S6W-26761
- Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 10 April 2024
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Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 29 April 2024
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how many people are currently waiting for an initial assessment of hearing loss in each NHS board area, also broken down by what the (a) average and (b) longest waiting time for such an assessment is in each NHS board.
Answer
Public Health Scotland (PHS) does not hold the information requested.
PHS uses the national waiting times datamart to collect electronic patient records covering the waits that patients experience waiting for a new outpatient appointment at a consultant led clinic. If a patient has been referred to a hearing loss clinic led by an audiologist, then those waits are not captured in the national dataset. On occasions where patients are referred directly to be assessed by an ear, nose & throat (ENT) consultant then those waits are included in the official statistics reported for ENT in the following link.
However, the data captured nationally does not allow for the identification of specific clinics and services within any specialty. https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/25286/newop_feb24.xlsx