NHS Waiting Times: 'Unreliable' Stats Hide Delays
The Health Secretary denies figures are falsified as a health watchdog finds treatment statistics are often recorded wrongly.

In the last year, the NHS has faced criticism after criticism, now the reliability of waiting time is being questioned. The National Audit Office has

accused NHS Trust in England of mis-recording data with some saying patients waited more or less time for treatment than they actually did.
“We are not suggesting that those data has been misrecording at the Trust we visited, we think NHS England and the Department of Health need to make sure

that consistent and reliable waiting time information is presented by the Trust in future. It needs to be comparable at the moment, we don’t think that

the data provided by the Trust is sufficiently comparable, and that means as a patient, if you're trying to decide which hospital to go to and waiting

time matters, we haven’t got a solid base as much to decide.”
It comes on a day when the government confirmed it’s tacking another issue facing the NHS. It wants to stop patients being passed around the system by

having one doctor in charge of looking after them. At university college hospital, that doctor's name is written above the beds.
“I think it's important you need to trust the people that are looking after you, because they’re making the diagnosis and you need to believe in what

they say and tell you to do. And I found it useful to put names to faces.”
“We would make sure that they have their consultant’s name.”
The new system doesn’t mean patients will only see one doctor, but they will know who has overall responsibility for their care.
“Their family, their loved ones come in, they can see who's looking after them and who they may need to put their questions to get clarity and get strong

communications, so we can really coordinate their care, get most effective, top quality care for the patient.”
It all comes down to the quality of care provide and the question of trust. NHS England says any problems with data have to be solved. But it is yet

another problem.
Steven Douglas. Sky News.