Waiting time prioritisation: Evidence from England (original) (raw)
2016, Social Science & Medicine
Waiting time prioritisation policies are increasingly common amongst OECD countries. The key idea is that patients with higher severity and higher marginal disutility of waiting should be prioritised on the list and therefore wait less. There is however very little empirical evidence on the extent to which doctors prioritise patients on the list. This paper fills this gap in knowledge. We use administrative data on all hip and knee replacements patients waiting in England over the years 2009-12 and link those to data from the national patientreported outcome measures survey in England. These data provide a unique opportunity to severity before surgery accurately and explore the relationship between severity and waiting times. Our regression results show that patients with higher severity tend to wait less, as expected, but the degree of prioritisation is surprisingly low. We also test whether the degree of prioritisation differs between hospitals with long and short waiting times. We find that the gradient is steeper in hospitals with longer waiting times. The finding has implications for countries which have been hit by the financial crisis leading to fewer resources for their health systems and longer waiting times for elective patients.
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