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GIC Waiting Times and 1st Appointments

Reference: 23-24302

Date response sent: 25/10/2023

Details of enquiry

  1. How many people are currently on the waiting list for a first appointment?
  2. How many people are currently on the waiting list to be transferred in?
  3. How many people have been seen for a first appointment in the last 28 days?
  4. How many people have been seen for a transfer appointment in the last 28 days?

Response sent

  1. How many people are currently on the waiting list for a first appointment?

We confirm that the Trust holds the information you have requested and publishes this data approximately monthly, subject to validation and ratification by the Trust integrated quality and performance review framework.  It is currently showing this data for August 2023 on its GIC website at Waiting times – Gender Identity Clinic – GIC . This will soon be updated with the latest data, and is therefore being withheld from disclosure under s22 of FOIA 2000, Information Intended for Future Publication.

Under section 22 of FOIA 2000 the Trust is not obliged to provide information intended for future publication, subject to the outcome of a public interest test, which weighs up whether the public interest in disclosing the information now, outweighs the public interest in withholding it until its publication date. (NB: Public interest is defined here as the public good, and not what is of interest to the public, nor the private interests of a requester.)

In line with the terms of this exemption, we have weighed up whether it would be in the public interest for us to provide you with this information ahead of publication, despite the exemption being applicable.

We took into account the following factors:

 

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure:

  • Disclosure would provide increased transparency via an early release of recent GIC waiting and appointment data
  • Disclosure of the information under FOIA would be consistent with the Trust’s intentions to proactively release data on matters of a wider public interest.

 

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information:

  • It is in the public interest that the Trust’s quality assurance process is able to conclude before making information available to the public to ensure confidence and accuracy
  • It is in the wider interest that information is accessible to the public domain by adhering to the Trust’s publication schedule, to ensure that it has adequate time to complete all planned data checks prior to final publication
  • Whilst there is a public interest in providing information within scope of an FOI request as quickly as possible, this needs to be balanced with the public interest in ensuring the data can be accessed simultaneously by the general public rather than piecemeal by disclosure to a small number of applicants under FOIA.

We have concluded that, on balance, the public interest is in withholding this information

  1. How many people are currently on the waiting list to be transferred in?
  2. We do not hold separate data for this as it very rarely happens that a patient asks to be transferred from their current GIC to us, and we would not be able to guarantee that they would be seen any sooner than they would in their current GIC.
  3. On the other hand, there are several new GIC pilot clinics which have recently been set up across the country, and indeed the GIC website advises patients on our waiting list to contact their GP to be re-referred to one of them.
  4. Transition of patients from our children and young people’s service (GIDS) to the GIC, is conducted under transitional arrangements related to continuity of their pathway into adult services (whether they are in-treatment or on the waiting list) and these are not counted separately.

We do not hold statistical data on adult patients transferring to the GIC, as this would be in very low numbers, and not statistically significant and could be person identifiable.  We do not treat GIDS patients as transfers, as these are triggered by the patient’s age and constitute a continuity of their current assessment/treatment or waiting list placement.

To establish these small numbers, we would need to manually examine all of the referrals’ notes for every waiting list patient referred over the past 28 days (the average number of referrals is approximately 300/month.  We estimate that this would take 15 minutes per file, ie 75 hours for 300 files which is beyond the resources provisioned under FOIA.  Accordingly the Trust is not obliged to process this question and has engaged exemption under s12 of FOIA, the cost of compliance exceeds the ‘appropriate limit,’ which for the NHS limit is 18 hours of officer time, at a generic rate of £25/hour = £450.

  1. How many people have been seen for a first appointment in the last 28 days?

See our response to Q 1 above.

  1. How many people have been seen for a transfer appointment in the last 28 days?

See our response to Q2 above.

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