Unintended consequences of the 18-week referral to treatment standard in NHS England: a threshold analysis.

Abstract

A retrospective observational study of publicly available data examined waiting times for patients on the waiting list. We examined trust performance against the 92% target by financial year, from 2015/16 to 2021/22, using Cattaneo et al's manipulation density test (test for discontinuity/spike in data around target threshold) for all patients and by type of treatment.