Medical student perspective: reducing patient waiting times in the UK National Health Service

Jasper Vink,Folashade Oyewole,Shiraz Jamshaid,Rohin Patel,Zubair Froogh,Maninder Bhambra Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UKWe read with great interest the article by Zaghloul and El Enein and agree with the conclusions made in particular regarding overbooking of outpatient services due to a mismatching of resources and the need for efficient outpatient scheduling. We believe these points to be relevant to the current status of the National Health Service (NHS), which is facing an ever growing demand for its services, leading to increasing waiting times as a result. Across NHS England, 838,600 patients were waiting for a key diagnostic test at the end of November 2015, a 5.6% increase from November 2014. Waiting times have been associated with lower patient satisfaction and reduced clinical outcomes. It is therefore crucial that management teams take an active approach to reducing waiting times.View the original paper by Zaghloul and El Enein