Chaos in the NHS

SIR – Like Dr SD Jones (Letters, November 4), I am a recently retired

NHS consultant. The delays and cancellations caused by poor management that he describes were very familiar to me, as well as those caused by patients not bothering to turn up.

However, the private hospital operating in the same building – many of whose patients were from the NHS – had no such problems. If the surgery did not take place, the staff did not get paid.

Roger Helm

Doncaster, South Yorkshire