For your eyes only – The data the NHS did not want the public to see!

After two years of lobbying and eventually using the Freedom Of Information Act we can now start to reveal the huge variations in access to NHS services.

NHS Choices uses generic data so waiting times are an average not an actual for each clinic the hospital provides so a clinic at a satellite hospital may have short wait times while the main hospital has very long waits. Nobody tells the patient they do not have to accept long waits.

NHS Choices does not display all the Independent Sector hospitals and the services they provide and there are NHS Trusts without many services published so patients can not be offered all the choices available to them. These are examples of how the NHS tries to hide information from patients when knowing could make a big difference to their quality of life and speed their return to full health and work.