To ask the Minister of Health whether he will consider publishing the statistics of the number of patients waiting for planned orthopaedic surgery in each Health and Socal Care Trust within the Waiting Times Statistics.

Inpatient and day case waiting list data provided to the Department of Health contain limited information on the specific surgical procedures for which patients are waiting.

Waiting lists are not managed by trained clinical coding staff and any procedure codes noted in these data may not fully detail all procedures that are planned or later performed. It is therefore not possible to count the number of patients waiting for orthopaedic surgery specifically.