As new waiting list figures are issued (2 March 2007) showing how long people in different parts of the country are waiting for medical treatment, we are getting used to seeing regional variations in availability and waiting times.

Now, another new indicator has just been published, which shows not how long people have to wait but how long people think is reasonable to wait, and that shows significant regional variations of interest to the healthcare sector and patients alike.

The 7th annual Standard Life Attitudes to Healthcare report* is based on the answers of 1000 adults to questions about how long it would be reasonable to wait for an operation or treatment for issues that are not life-threatening - such as a hernia, a new knee or bad back. It shows that:

* Southerners are twice as likely Northerners to expect treatment within just one week. One in ten Southerners chose seven days.

* One in four people overall think that a month is long enough to wait. But Northerners (28 per cent) said this much more than people in the Midlands (22 per cent).

* The Scots were strongly in favour of a one month maximum wait with more than a third (36 per cent) saying so.

* One in three people said that three months was a reasonable wait, more so in the Midlands (36 per cent) than anywhere else.

* One in four would see six months as a reasonable wait but that drops to one in five in Scotland and even less (18 per cent) in Greater London.

* Fewer than one in ten overall see one year as an acceptable wait for treatment.

Standard Life Healthcare's chief executive Mike Hall said: 'Healthcare, like many areas of life now, is very much about managing people's expectations. And it's clear that people have very high expectations of what's reasonable when it comes to medical care.

In fact our survey showed that more than one in two would consider paying for treatment rather than wait for the NHS, but the vast majority didn't realise how much treatments cost. Many people woefully underestimated** both how much a fairly common knee procedure and bigger treatments such as heart bypass would cost.'

More information about the study is available at www.standardlifehealthcare.co.uk.

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