One in 10 people on knee replacement waiting lists in Northern Ireland stuck for more than four years, while two-thirds of patients face surgery delay lasting longer than 12 months - and hip replacements are almost as bad
Two-thirds of people who need knee replacement surgery are trapped on waiting lists for more than a year.
And more than one in 10 of them are stuck waiting longer than four years.
Meanwhile half of patients on waiting lists for hip replacements spend more than one year on them, while one in 20 waits longer than four years.
Despite aims to knock provincewide wait times down to a single year at most, Health Minister Mike Nesbitt says an attempt to get £135m to shorten the province’s orthopaedic lists failed earlier this year – something he describes as “a missed opportunity” to improve the situation.
The timeframe in Northern Ireland stands in stark contrast to England, where the NHS says no one should be on a knee replacement waiting list longer than 18 weeks.
According to the most recent statistics available, across the province 6,287 people are waiting for knee replacement surgery; 4,006 of them have been on that list for more than one year.
And 4,162 patients are on waiting lists for hip replacements, of whom 2,205 have been there longer than a year.
The shocking statistics for Northern Ireland were unearthed by TUV MLA Timothy Gaston in the Assembly.
Stating that the waiting lists make “sobering reading”, he pointed a finger at politicians in charge of Stormont for spending time on “squander and repeated calls to write blank checks for Casement Park, or whatever the latest headline grabber is” instead of sorting out the health service.
"While there has been a promise to focus on health, even the Barnett consequentials flowing from the uplift in NHS pay in Great Britain have not followed through in relation to our own health service,” Mr Gaston said.
"We are seeing the outworkings of a policy of successive DUP and Sinn Fein-led executives, which have had a policy of reducing the number of hospital beds and associated staff.
“Behind these numbers, it is easy to forget that there are people in chronic daily pain."
Answering Assembly questions, the Health Minister said that current waiting times are unacceptable.
"Earlier this year, a bid was made by my department for £135m to help reduce elective waiting lists, including orthopaedics,” Mr Nesbitt stated.
"Unfortunately this bid was not supported, which was a missed opportunity to improve our waiting lists.”