Autism: Lincolnshire

The information requested is not held centrally, but may be held by individual providers or integrated care boards (ICBs). Some relevant information is available on autism assessment waiting times for the NHS Lincolnshire ICB. In the NHS Lincolnshire ICB in June 2024, the Autism Waiting Time Statistics show that there was a total of 1,455 patients with an open suspected autism referral. 55 of these patients were aged zero to 17 years old, and 1,405 of these patients were aged 18 years old and over. Since each metric is rounded to the nearest five in the published data, the number of adults and children do not add up to the total number of patients.

The median waiting time of all patients in this ICB with an open suspected autism referral, where their first care contact was in the quarter, was 232 days for over 18-year-olds. For zero- to 17-year-olds, the median number of days patients waited was not able to be provided, due to a small sample size of the number of children who had their first care contact in the most recent quarter.

Data on children and young people in this dataset is expected to be an underestimate and caution should be used when interpreting these statistics, since they are experimental rather than official statistics. The majority of children assessed for autism in the United Kingdom are seen in child development services, which are out of the scope of this dataset. This means the published figures will underestimate the volume of referrals or diagnoses and the associated impact on health services. NHS England continues to conduct exploratory analysis into the Community Services Dataset, with a view to including autism waiting times data from that dataset.