A hospital that did not record nearly 3,000 patients waiting times for the 18 week operation waiting list have published the causes for the backlog after an external panel was brought in to resolve the issue.

The Chief Executive of The North West London Hospitals NHS Trust, David McVittie, which runs Northwick Park Hospital in Watford Road, Harrow has spoken of the improvements the hospital has made over the last year to ensure that no one on an 18 week waiting list is waiting over more than that time.

The backlog of patients grew due to poor data resources and staff not being fully trained to use and monitor the systems which log and record the waiting times of patients.

The external review revealed that 11 patients on the waiting list waited over 52 weeks to have their operations, which were mainly minor orthopaedic surgeries.

There were 2,700 patients waiting times not recorded properly, half of which were waiting over the 18 week period and half under.

Chief executive, David McVittie said: "The public had a right to know, we accept that patients had to wait too long. No patients were harmed and no one died as a cause of it.

"We commissioned the external review as we wanted to assure ourselves that we had done everything we could to resolve the problems we had so this cannot happen again.

"Most importantly, while recognising the distress that may have been caused to patients who waited longer for treatment, we wanted to be sure that patients did not come to any significant harm because of delays.

"The review has provided us with these assurances, but we let people down and I would like to re-iterate how sorry I am that this happened."

The findings from the panel revealed that the Trust had identified the causes of the 18 week delays and that appropriate action has been taken to address the causes, which included, more staff training, guidance on how to use the data systems and regular professional audits.

Mr McVittie added: “After discovering the problems we had with recording of 18 week waiting times we thought it was right and proper that we look at the quality of all our data. As a result of this work, we identified that 61 urology patients had been waiting longer than they should have been for a follow-up appointment. We immediately contacted these patients, apologised and put on extra weekend clinics so they could be seen as soon as possible. We investigated this incident and there is no evidence that any of these patients had come to harm as a result of the delay.”

The review panel’s final report was presented to the Trust’s Board yesterday (Wednesday, April 30).

David McVittie added: “This is not end of the journey. It is vital we maintain our grip and focus on improving 18 week waiting times and we will be monitoring and auditing our waiting lists to ensure the changes we have made are embedded across our organisation.”