The shift was needed to make allowance for people who chose to wait longer, did not turn up for their appointments or who had clinical reasons why their treatment should wait, said Ben Bradshaw, the health minister, yesterday.

One option under consideration was to set the target so that 90 per cent of patients who needed hospital admission were treated within 18 weeks. For those treated as outpatients or in the community the target would be 95 per cent.

The shift is likely to be seen by some as an attempt to soften a demanding target that the National Health Service is required to hit by the end of next year. But Mr Bradshaw said the change was aimed at recognising the reality of what happened, without burdening hospitals with the bureaucracy of having routinely to provide reasons for every patient who appeared to breach the 18-week promise.

The parallel was with the four-hour wait for treatment in accident and emergency departments where the target was 98 per cent in recognition that some patients needed to wait longer for clinical observation.

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said ministers would struggle to convince the public “that this change isn’t merely providing political cover because of fears they will fail to achieve their -target”.

Bradshaw’s moving goalpsots were made as the health department published its latest, but still incomplete, data on 18-week waits, which show continued progress towards the target but with large variations.

Fifty-six per cent of patients admitted to hospital were seen within 18 weeks in August, up from 48 per cent in March, along with three-quarters whose treatment did not require admission.

Nonetheless, large numbers are still waiting more than a year.

From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/83212d74-8e66-11dc-8591-0000779fd2ac.html

Less than two months ago Health Direct posted: Ben Bradshaw is confident of achieving 18 week target when Ben Bradshaw was forced to defend the incompetence of his Department of Health this week after a detailed analysis by the Financial Times found that fully a quarter of the population would have to wait longer than the basic 18 weeks between referral by a GP and treatment which labour promised.

But with only 18 months to go, progress at the same rate would still leave 25 per cent of patients waiting more than 18 weeks. In June, 25,000 of the patients treated had waited more than a year, and almost 75,000 more than six months.

Bradshaw was responding to news that Health Direct posted on September 10, 2007
NHS to miss 18 week treatment wait targets

The National Health Service is set to fall well short of its target of ensuring that no one waits more than 18 weeks from seeing a family doctor to completion of treatment, latest official figures suggest.

But while the figures point to waits for diagnostic tests being a key contributor to delays in treatment, private sector contracts originally designed to deliver 1.5m extra tests a year are still being held up by an ever lengthening review in the Department of Health of whether they should go ahead.