Patients and families are paying the price. No one chooses cancer, dialysis or a long hospital stay. The fact is that these charges punish people for being sick. Parents visiting sick children, carers and people with disabilities are being hit again and again. Hospitals should not depend on money taken from sick people and their families.
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Official figures I have received show that, of this overall group, some patients are waiting more than 709 weeks for an outpatient appointment.
I have published legislation to require the National Treatment Purchase Fund to publish community waiting lists every month, because we need the same level of transparency for primary and community care as we expect for hospitals.
These community waiting lists are on top of almost one million people already waiting for care in our acute hospital.
When a woman is certain that this is what she wants, it allows her to make that decision for herself in her own time, about her own pregnancy without a mandatory delay.
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