NHS tells hospitals to cancel all routine operations

All surgery apart from the most crucial postponed for a month as health service struggles with flu outbreak

EVERY hospital in the country has been ordered to cancel all non-urgent surgery until at least February in an unprecedented step by NHS officials.

The instructions last night, which will lead to the cancellation of around 50,000 operations, followed claims by senior doctors that patients were being treated in “third world” conditions, as hospital chief executives warned of the worst winter crisis for three decades.

Hospitals are reporting growing chaos, with a sharp rise in winter flu cases leaving frail patients facing 12hour waits and some units running out of corridor space.

Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director, last night ordered hospital trusts to stop taking all but the most urgent cases, closing outpatient clinics for weeks as well as cancelling surgery.

Trusts have also been told they can abandon efforts to house male and female patients in separate wards, in an effort to protect basic safety, as services become overwhelmed.

The chaos follows a rise in flu cases, when many hospitals were already close to capacity, with high numbers of patients stuck on wards for want of social care. By last night 12 NHS trusts – including two ambulance services covering almost nine million people – had declared they had reached the maximum state of emergency. One ambulance trust resorted to using taxis to ferry patients to hospital, while another asked patients to find a family member to get them to hospital.

Health officials said pressures on the NHS were expected to continue to rise, with flu levels surging.

Sir Bruce said: “I want to thank NHS staff who have worked incredibly hard under sustained pressure to take care of patients over the Christmas. We expect these pressures to continue and there are early signs of increased flu prevalence. The NHS needs to take further action to increase capacity and minimise disruptive last-minute cancellations.”

Successive governments have banned mixed sex wards to protect pa- tients’ dignity. The decision to relax the rules was last night seen as a desperate measure.

In Staffordshire, one senior consultant said vulnerable patients were now being treated in “third world conditions” amid mass overcrowding.

Dr Richard Fawcett, a consultant in emergency medicine at Royal Stoke hospital, said it broke his heart to see elderly and frail people lining NHS corridors. The doctor, who has done three tours of Afghanistan commanding a field hospital, yesterday tweeted: “As an A&E consultant at University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust I personally apologise to the people of Stoke for the third world conditions of the dept due to overcrowding.”

North East Ambulance Service is among trusts declaring the highest state of alert, warning that its “response standards to potentially

the building of new grammars across the country. The Prime Minister abandoned her pledge after the snap election that wiped out her majority.

Her party’s manifesto had committed to ending a ban on new selective schools but this was omitted in the Queen’s Speech in June.

The National Grammar Schools Association said the figures showed the highest numbers attending grammars since 1998 when Tony Blair passed a law preventing new grammar schools in England.

But numbers have risen steadily with existing grammars increasing entry to meet the demand from parents.

Philip Bosworth, the association’s treasurer, said yesterday: “Parents are exercising their choice for their children to sit the 11-plus. This proves that new grammar schools are needed – especially in the 75 per cent of the country where there are currently no grammar schools.”

There are 163 grammar schools in England – compared with 3,000 state secondaries. Some have almost doubled their intake in recent years.

Parent Ruth Cornish was delighted every grammar in Gloucestershire, where she lives, had expanded. “I think it’s a consumer society. Parental demand is there and children want to go,” she said. But opponents of selective education complain that by increasing grammar school places the quality of education in the non-selective secondary schools is adversely affected.

Jon Andrews, of the Education Policy Institute, said: “Our research shows that as you increase the number of grammar school places, the penalties on those who miss out on getting into grammar school increase.”