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J R Soc Med 2002;95:220
doi:10.1258/jrsm.95.4.220
© 2002 Royal Society of Medicine

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J R Soc Med 2002;95:220
© 2002 The Royal Society of Medicine

Self-regulation in hospital waiting lists

Marios C Papadopoulos

Atkinson Morley's Hospital, London SW20 0NE, UK

Dr Freckleton and Professor Sutherland (March 2002 JRSM1) offer a reanalysis that is alleged to contradict the conclusions of our paper2. However, the tests that they employ do not rule out self-regulation. For example, lack of significance in Pollard's test (which has already been criticized for its low statistical power) and the failure of the variable ‘change slope’ to fall below — 1 may be due to the shortness of the time series. It is also unclear how ‘trend slope’ was calculated, and the trends are so near zero that it is doubtful whether there is any correlation between queue size and time. The beauty of self-organized criticality is that it explains many properties of waiting lists2 which cannot be satisfactorily explained by theories based on lack of self-regulation.

REFERENCES

  1. Freckleton RP, Sutherland WJ. Do in-hospital waiting lists show self-regulation? [Letter]. J R Soc Med2002; 95:164[Free Full Text]

  2. Papadopoulos MC, Hadjitheodossiou M, Chrysostomou C, Hardwidge C, Bell BA. Is the National Health Service at the edge of chaos? J R Soc Med 2001;94:613 -16[Abstract/Free Full Text]


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