Released 4 July 2023
Request:
I am writing to request, under the Freedom of Information Act,
- the number of patients who died in 2022 while waiting to receive planned care at your trust and
- how many of those patients had been waiting for more than 18 weeks.
Information disclosed:
In the calendar year 2022, a total of 1,462 patients died while on the Referral to Treatment (RTT) waiting list.
Of these, 568 had been on the waiting list for over 18 weeks.
This data is based on RTT clock stops with the RTT code 36 (patient died before treatment) and includes both inpatients and outpatients.
Please note to provide some context we have approximately 150,000 patients on RTT waiting lists at any given time.
It is important to note that these deaths would not necessarily have been related to the condition the patients were on the waiting list to receive treatment for, and we may not be aware of patient deaths that occurred after the patient left our care.