Geographic inequalities in diagnostic testing delays in England before and after COVID
White, B.; Barclay, M. E.; Lyratzopoulos, G.; Swann, R.; Francetic, I.; Sutton, M.
Show abstract
Diagnostic testing delays worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is unclear whether geographic inequalities have deepened. Using publicly-available data in England for nine tests, we compared waiting times across 106 local areas in 2019 and 2024-25. The national median proportion of patients waiting over six weeks increased from 2.2% to 18.8%, while geographic variation tripled. The greatest variation in 2024-25 occurred for flexible-sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy, and echocardiography. These findings show that pandemic-related diagnostic delays persist and pre-existing geographic inequalities have deepened. Further research should examine how widening inequalities in waiting times influences downstream test demand and disease outcomes.
Matching journals
The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
- Identifying markers of health-seeking behaviour and healthcare access in UK electronic health records 92%
- Trends in inequalities in avoidable hospitalisations across the COVID-19 pandemic: A cohort study of 23.5 million people in England 92%
- What is the suitability of clinical vignettes in benchmarking the performance of online symptom checkers? An audit study 92%
Similar papers in this journal
- Spatio-temporal modelling of referrals to outpatient respiratory clinics in the integrated care system of the Morecambe Bay area, England 91%
- Educational interventions delivered to prescribing advisers to influence primary care prescribing: a very low-cost pragmatic randomised trial using routine data from OpenPrescribing.net 90%
- Access to personal protective equipment in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom: results from a nationwide cohort study (UK-REACH) 90%
Similar papers in this journal
- OpenSAFELY NHS Service Restoration Observatory 1: describing trends and variation in primary care clinical activity for 23.3 million patients in England during the first wave of COVID-19 92%
- Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: randomised controlled trial 92%
- Primary care transformation in Scotland: a comparison two cross-sectional national surveys of general practitioners’ views in 2018 and 2023 92%
Similar papers in this journal
- An observational study of survival outcomes of people referred for ‘fast-track’ end-of-life care funding in a District General Hospital; too little too late? 89%
- Interventions To Improve Patient Safety During The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review 89%
- Accuracy of Medical Billing Data Against the Electronic Health Record in the Measurement of Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates 89%
Similar papers in this journal
- Refugee Healthcare Resilience and Burdens: A 10-year Mixed-Methods Analysis of System Shocks in Canada 89%
- The cost of inaction to strengthen the resilience of primary health care in Latin America and the Caribbean: a modelling study 88%
- Risk factors for severe COVID-19 in hospitalized children in Canada: A national prospective study from March 2020–May 2021 87%
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.