Manx Care is a long way from meeting its waiting list targets for some areas of elective care.

Children are waiting a year and a half for their first outpatient paediatric neurology appointment.

The mean waiting list for oral surgery is also almost 18 months while that for clinical physiology and ENT is more than a year.

Manx Care has published waiting times for elective care for the first time. These will be updated on a monthly basis

The elective waiting list is made up of patients who are awaiting non-urgent medical treatment or procedures.

Manx Care inherited a significant waiting list backlog across all inpatient, day-case and outpatient specialties, largely because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Manx Care’s long-term target is for 92% of elective patients still waiting for treatment to wait no more than 18 weeks.

The UK has set a similar target but this has not been met since 2015.

In the meantime, Manx Care has an initial target to eliminate waits of more than 52 weeks for elective care, with a target of 64 weeks by this month.

It wants to eliminate waits of more than 17 weeks from referral to first outpatient appointment for consultant-led services, except where patients choose to wait longer or in specific specialities, and waits of more than 17 weeks from a decision to treat to definitive treatment for day case and inpatient elective care.

The published figures are for all patients on an elective waiting list for consultant-led services as at March 12 this year.

These figures are for the median waiting times rather than the mean or average which can be skewed by a small number of patients with either very short or very long  wait times. Some will wait longer and others less time.

Paediatric neurology has the longest waiting time from referral to first outpatient appointment, at 77 weeks.

The waiting time for oral surgery is 73 weeks, clinical physiology is 66 weeks, ENT is 52 weeks and respiratory medicine 51 weeks.

These figures are the current waiting time a patient can expect for their first appointment with a clinician having been referred by their GP or dentist. This may be face-to-face, online or by telephone.

Meanwhile, patients due to have oral surgery have the longest waiting time from decision to treat to treatment at 42 weeks.

ENT patients have to wait 30 weeks from the decision to treat if they to have a day case procedure or 15 weeks if they are to be in-patients.

In-patient gynaecology patients have the longest wait, at 37 weeks, between the decision to treat and their treatment.

The waiting times quoted can vary depending on each patient's clinical condition. Some patients may only require to be seen in an outpatient setting to deliver their care, and may not require any daycase or inpatient treatment. The published information does not give an indication of waiting times for patients on a cancer pathway.

Also excluded are points of delivery and specialty combinations with fewer than 10 patients waiting to avoid any possible identification of an individual.

Manx Care had been using a private healthcare company to help reduce waiting list backlogs.

Synaptik was brought in to carry out endoscopies, cataract procedures and hip and knee replacement operations.

Manx Care said: ‘It has been one of Manx Care's key objectives under its operating plan and restoration and recovery programme to begin the publication of current waiting list sizes and indicative waiting times by specialty on a monthly basis. This report is the first step in realising that ambition.’