Some patients in Northern Ireland have been waiting more than a decade for orthopaedic and plastic surgery in Northern Ireland according to figures provided by the Health Minister.
Health Minister Mike Nesbitt was responding to a series of questions from TUV MLA Timothy Gaston who had asked him to outline the waiting time for hip and knee replacement surgery in each Health Trust and to detail the time taken to secure a first outpatient appointment to gain a place on the waiting list.
The figures show that as of March 2024, there were 4,162 people in Northern Ireland waiting on a hip replacement and 6,282 people waiting on a knee replacement with the majority of those waiting on hip replacements for up to two years while 273 patients have been waiting more than four years for their hip operation.
When it comes to knee replacements, 1,368 people have been waiting between two to four years for their surgery with 722 people waiting more than four years.
While these figures are startling, the Minister also revealed that the longest a patient has been waiting on inpatient or daycase orthopaedic surgery in the Belfast Trust was 551 weeks, or 10 and a half years and in the Southern Trust, the longest wait time for inpatient and daycase plastic surgery was 554 weeks or 10 years and eight months.
Responding to figures, Timothy Gaston said: “Back in October, I asked the Health Minister to provide the waiting time for a hip replacement and knee replacement, broken down by Health and Social Care Trust. I was shocked to discover that 273 people have been waiting more than four years for a hip replacement while when it came to knee replacements there were 722 with 355 in the Western Trust alone.
“However, from talking to patients and charities in the sector I gathered that they believed the situation to be actually much worse as these figures took no account of the time taken to secure a first outpatient appointment to gain a place on the waiting list so I asked a follow up question of the Minister.
“The Minister has now advised me that the longest time a patient has been on a waiting list for an inpatient/daycase procedure, the corresponding speciality and the outpatient appointment for the same speciality is 551 weeks for an orthopaedics inpatient or daycase procedure and 260 weeks for an outpatients appointment (or 5 years). When it comes to other specialisms, the situation is not much better and, in some cases, worse, with a 554-week wait for a plastic surgery inpatient appointment and 517 week wait for a general surgery outpatient appointment.
“These figures expose the fact that while our waiting times are horrendous, they are actually much worse than often suggested by the published data. Significantly, the Program for Government offers nothing more than platitudes on this issue and while it is claimed that a return of devolution would ensure local Ministers sorted out such matters, the track record of Stormont is abysmal when it comes to health with waiting times growing year on year since devolution came back in the Paisley/McGuinness era.”
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