Wait for a hearing aid can be more than two years in Britain

Some hard-of-hearing patients in England are having to wait more than two years for an NHS hearing aid. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) used the Freedom of Information Act to discover just how long the waits were. It found that ten trusts were not treating patients within a year, in spite of the Government’s target being 18 weeks. The worst offender was Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, where patients had to wait 125 weeks for an aid after first seeing their GP.

The average wait was 22 weeks in the 99 primary care trusts (PCTs) across the country that responded to the request. Another 53 failed to reply. The shortest wait was four weeks; 66 of the 99 trusts provided treatment within 18 weeks. The longest waits - all more than a year – were in Suffolk (78 weeks), Gloucestershire (72), Tyne and Wear: Washington Health Centre (68), Ealing (67), Havering (64), Tyne & Wear: Sunderland Royal Hospital (62), Shepway (58), Mid Essex (56) and South Tees (54).

The RNID said that 39 per cent of new patients in England wait for more than a year to get their hearing aids. Brian Lamb, for the institure, said: “If you struggle to pick up every word, hearing aids are a lifeline to work, friends and family. “Despite government assurances, an 18-week target is a distant dream for thousands of people waiting over a year for their first hearing aid, who are battling isolation and depression because of their hearing loss.

A Department of Health spokes-woman said: “We acknowledge that audiology waiting times in parts of the country are too high, and that is why we recently published a national framework which sets out the tools the local NHS needs to transform this service.”

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