Hospitals axe 9,000 operations
HOSPITALS in Greater Manchester are cancelling an average of 27 operations a day.
Exclusive figures show hospital trusts across Greater Manchester cancelled 9,762 operations in 2017/18 – the equivalent of 26.7 a day.
The number of cancellations at the area’s hospital trusts has jumped by nearly a third (31 per cent) in a year from 7,470 in 2016/17, according to figures revealed following a Freedom of Information request.
The most common reason for operations to be cancelled was due to theatre lists over-running or a lack of time to operate on all listed patients in a session, with 2,528 cancellations for this reason in 2017/18. This was up by 57pc from the 1,609 cancellations recorded in 2016/17.
There were 2,424 cancellations due to a lack of beds, up 26pc from 2016/17, while a total of 1,760 operations were cancelled due to staff being unavailable, a 53pc increase in a year.
Hospitals are only required to count last-minute cancellations.
Last-minute cancellations are those that take place on the day the operation is scheduled, including after the patient has arrived at hospital.
While some record all cancellations, not all do, since cancellations far in advance of the operation date are usually rescheduled with less impact on patients.
Manchester University NHS Trust provided all cancellations. There were 2,045 operations cancelled in 2017/18, a 3pc decrease in a year from 2,116 cancellations in 2016/17.
Pennine Acute cancelled 4,361 operations at the last minute, triple the number a year before, while there were 792 cancellations at Tameside, down 46pc.
Across Britain, hospitals cancelled 238,000 operations in 2017/18, including all types of cancellations – the equivalent of a cancellation every two minutes on average.
This includes 34,000 cancellations because no beds were available, 34,000 cancellations due to staff being unavailable, and 31,000 cancellations due to theatre lists over-running. Based on trusts and health boards that provided information for all years, the number of cancellations has jumped by 9pc in a year, and is 29pc higher than in 2013/14. In the past year, cancellations due to staff being unavailable and due to emergencies taking precedence have both jumped by a quarter, while cancellations due to paperwork or test results being missing have risen by 43pc.
Jon Ashworth, shadow health and social care secretary, said: “Cancelled operations on this scale is nothing short of a scandal and comes on the back of years of Tory cuts to hospital beds, austerity and chronic staff shortages.”
An NHS spokesman said: “Despite significant pressure, in England fewer than 1pc of operations are postponed on the day with just 0.9pc cancelled in the last three months. Nurses, doctors and NHS leaders across the country are also rightly prioritising emergency patients over winter.”