Thousands of NHS operations cancelled

Thousands of NHS operations were cancelled last year, many because of shortages of staff, beds or equipment, figures suggest. One in three hospital trusts cancelled surgery for the same patient at least three times, and up to 7,014 patients had operations cancelled or rescheduled more than once, data obtained by the Conservatives shows.

The most common reported reason for cancellation was problems with theatre bookings, responsible for 16,617 cases. Other causes included: 400 operations cancelled because the patient's notes had been lost, more than 10,000 cancelled because of bed shortages, nearly 4,000 because of equipment failure and more than 11,000 because of staffing shortages.

Data from 124 trusts - more than three quarters of those in England - responding to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, suggested that 77,302 operations were cancelled for "non-clinical reasons" in 2007-08. However, the trusts with the highest reported cases of cancelled surgery apologised yesterday for providing inaccurate data.

Kingston Hospital NHS Trust, which reported 10,351 operations cancelled last year, said that this figure was incorrect. "This was an error on our part and we apologise for any confusion this mistake has caused," the trust said, adding that only 190 operations were cancelled in 2007-08. Other trusts reporting more than 3,000 cancellations included hospitals in York and Brighton and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. They also said that the figures were erroneous or had been misinterpreted.

Many cases could have been cancellations by patients themselves or have been logged as changes by hospitals before the patient was notified of a date for surgery, NHS staff said.

A spokesman for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust said: "Over six hundred of the operations that were `cancelled' were in fact brought forward to an earlier date and around 1,000 were administrative cancellations, which are about how the hospital schedules its work."

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: "Having an operation cancelled can cause huge distress for patients and their families. It's simply unacceptable that these figures are so high."

Government figures show that the number of cancelled operations has increased by 14 per cent since 1997. There were 57,350 cancelled operations in 2007-08, compared with 50,505 in 1997-98, official records state, but they include only operations cancelled 24 hours in advance or less.

Richard Collins, a spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons, said that the figures would almost certainly relate to elective, planned surgery rather than urgent care. "The shortage of ICU [intensive care unit] beds for major surgery patients is a common problem, especially in winter," he added. "Notes are also lost on a worryingly frequent basis."

A Department of Health spokesman said: "The number of cancelled operations needs to be set against the huge increase in the number of patients that the NHS is treating. "Between 1997 and 2008, the number of elective admissions has increased by over 1.5million while the number of operations cancelled at the last moment remained at less than 1.5 per cent."

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