Scrap winter ops to ease pressure

SCRAPPING pre-planned operations during two months a year could solve the NHS’s winter pressure problems, the Society of Acute Medicine says.

Dr Nick Scriven, Society president, said some doctors have called on the health service to consider stopping elective activity throughout January and February.

Hospitals in England were told this year to delay elective operations and routine outpatient appointments throughout January due to severe winter pressures.

Dr Scriven said that the NHS had “just coped” over winter, but this was based on the goodwill of staff.

When asked what the solution should be, he said: “People in power have to sit up and take notice that this isn’t going to get better.

“There are the things that people always talk about, like this year the NHS suggested that people should suspend elective activity for a month, should that be a routine thing?

“To free up the extra ward in every hospital in January and February. That would be one radical thing.”

The comments come after a document published on the House of Commons Library acknowledged that pressures on the health service in England “loomed particularly large” this winter.

An open letter signed by new national medical director for NHS England Professor Stephen Powis said: “Opportunities to limit ill-health are missed, patients get pushed from pillar to post, staff are frustrated when trying to ‘do the right thing’, hospitals pick up the pieces – and pressures build.

“Those pressures, which loomed particularly large this winter, are symptomatic not only of constrained funding, but also of a system designed for a different era,” he added.