Written question asked by Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat) on Wednesday, 12 October 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Friday, 14 October 2005. It was answered by Liam Byrne (Labour) on Tuesday, 15 November 2005 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Scanning Services

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how long the central collection of statistics on waiting times for (a) CT scans, (b) MRI scans and (c) other imaging and diagnostic tests takes, including the production of reports; and if she will make a statement.

Answer: Data on waiting times for diagnostic tests and procedures are not currently collected centrally.However, to support delivery of the 18-week patient pathway, the Department, working with the national health service, has developed a commissioner-based diagnostics waiting times data collection, which will be introduced in January 2006. This will look at waiting times for a number of diagnostic tests and procedures, including magnetic resonance imaging and computerised tomography.During the piloting phase, pilot sites were submitting diagnostics data on the 15th working day after the month end. It is anticipated that we will follow a similar timetable for national roll-out of the diagnostics data collection.

Secondary information