Hospitals can’t cope says MSP

A TOTAL of 674 operations were cancelled at NHS Highland in 2016, new figures have revealed

Highlands and Islands MSP Dave Stewart said the problem was that hospitals could not cope with the increased demand under current financial pressures.

NHS Highland and Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Partnership have been asked to make savings across the board.

The Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) is being asked to cut its budget by up to £22 million over the next five years.

Analysis from Scottish Labour found that 7,740 operations were cancelled across Scotland in 2016 because of a lack of capacity, equipment or staff to carry them out – an average of 21 a day.

Mr Stewart said: ‘The figures back up NHS staff concerns about growing pressures and the long-term solution is to invest in social care to take pressure off hospital resources.’

He continued: ‘The SNP-Green budget is set to cut a further £170 million from local hospital budgets in the coming year, taking the total to £1.5 billion of cuts since 2011.

‘Now that we see that 674 planned operations were cancelled last year, we know it was because hospitals across NHS Highland did not have the capacity to cope.’

A spokesman for NHS Highland said: ‘The decision to cancel a patient is not one that we take lightly and all efforts are made to ensure that any cancellations are kept to a minimum. Any cancellations are prioritised and rebooked as quickly as possible.’