Cholecystectomy waiting times since 2018 (FOI)

Request

How long are people now waiting for cholecystectomy from date of confirmed symptomatic gallstones with bile sludge and how many of patients have been admitted for emergency gall bladder surgery or complications in the last five years?

Response

Waiting list figures and times for cholecystectomy have been published in a recent Freedom of Information response, available on www.gov.je at the following link:

Waiting time for cholecystectomy (FOI)

Please note that Health and Community Services’ central records use the date a patient was added to the surgical waiting list, date of referral, rather than the date of symptom presentation or diagnosis. Whilst this information may be available in individual medical records, examining all records in scope of this request would exceed the timescales prescribed in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Therefore, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

The attached table details the total count of emergency cholecystectomies recorded against discharges in each of the last five complete calendar years, from 2018 to 2022 inclusive. Where numbers are small, disclosure control is applied to protect individuals from identification and numbers fewer than five are shown as ‘<5’. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Annual totals for emergency cholecystectomy 2018 to 2022.pdf

As noted above, data is derived from reporting by discharge date, rather than date of surgery. As such, patients who were admitted prior to 1st January 2018 but discharged after this date will be included, irrespective of their surgery date in that admission. For the same reason, patients admitted prior to 31 December 2022 but discharged after this date will not be included in the numbers.

Cases meeting the criteria for inclusion have been identified by the procedure codes assigned to the episode of care in the Electronic Patient Record, and where recorded as emergency admissions (whether via Emergency Department, GP or Outpatients). Clinical Coding of a patient’s admission is carried out after discharge from hospital. Data is incomplete for the full time period in question, and subsequently, figures may be subject to change as Clinical Coding of admissions continues and completion levels increase.

Articles Applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations. 

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.