Clinical and lay preferences for the explicit prioritisation of elective waiting lists: survey evidence from Wales

Waiting lists are a persistent feature of public health care systems. The United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) is considering priority scoring systems as a means of ensuring that patients are treated according to clinical need rather than maximum waiting time targets. Our objective was to elicit the preferences of those involved in the finance, delivery and receipt of elective health care regarding the clinical and social factors that should and should not determine waiting time. We conducted a postal survey of 750 general practitioners, 500 consultants, 29 health authority commissioners and 1000 members of the general public across Wales. We found both professional and lay support for a more explicit system of rationing access to elective health care by waiting list. The majority of each of the survey groups believe that level of pain, rate of deterioration of disease, level of distress and level of disability should play the most influential role in determining waiting times. They agree that age, ability to pay, cost of treatment, evidence of cost-effectiveness, existence of dependants, and self-inflicted ill health should have little or no influence on patient priority. In conclusion, were the NHS to widen its use of waiting list priority scoring systems, our study suggests that there may be some degree of consensus as to the criteria to be used.