Lies, damn lies and health statistics

The fact that the Deputy First Minister was standing in for Mr McConnell at Questions today did little to raise the level of the proceedings, which were inevitably dominated by the health service. Example:

"Nicola Sturgeon: ... can I indeed refer the Deputy First Minister to the latest waiting times figures which show in fact yet another dramatic increase in median waiting times for in-patients and an even bigger increase for out-patients. So would the Deputy First Minister agree with me that, far from this being good news, as the Executive is trying to claim, it is yet further evidence that Scottish patients are getting a raw deal?

Deputy First Minister: Well I appreciate that possibly as a former maths teacher the First Minister might be better equipped to give a maths lesson in statistics to Ms Sturgeon, but I have sixth year studies statistics; but the median is - what was said at the press briefing earlier today showed how the median can go up, it could stay the same or go down or indeed reduce to zero, depending upon which way you actually presented the statistics. It's not the figure that actually matters to individual patients. In fact if Nicola Sturgeon understood it, she would understand that the more we focus on trying to tackle the length of time that thos have been waiting longest on the waiting list and actually deal with that, then the more likely it is that the median will continue to rise. What matters is people and what matters is trying to get people who have been waiting longest off the waiting list.

That's why we have met our guarantee of 9 months; we have met our guarantee of 12 months; we are well on the way to meeting our guarantee of 6 months for in-patients.

One of the figures which struck me most was that 60,000 fewer people are waiting for an out-patient appointment than there was six months ago. That is quite a staggering achievement.

Nicola Sturgeon: Can I remind the Deputy First Minister that his own statistics department describe the median waiting time as "the most robust measurement of performance"? Can I offer him a reality check? Can I remind him that in the last quarter the median wait for in-patients was 42 days - it is now 47 days; and that for out-patients it was 56 days - it is now 62 days; and that in the last quarter only 16% of out-patients had to wait more than 6 months for an appointment - now 20%, one in five, of all out-patients have to wait more than 6 months for an appointment. Isn't it the case that to try to paint that record as asuccess is an insult to the intelligence of thousands of patients all over Scotland ..."

At this point, I confess that I rather dosed off.