Under 50 operations cancelled amid pandemic pressures

NHS England figures for Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust show 46 pre-booked operations were postponed on or after the day the patient was admitted between October and December.

During that time, the Trust carried out 4,658 operations and the figures do not record which operations were cancelled by the Trust because of pressures caused by the pandemic or other reasons and how many were cancelled at the request of the patient.

Eliot Sykes, Northumbria Healthcare’s surgical business unit director, said: “We always try to avoid last-minute cancellations or other disruptions to patients, but unfortunately there are occasions where we have no option but to postpone operations.

“During the period in question, we carried out 4,658 operations, meaning that the overwhelming majority of patients received the high-quality care they expected as planned.”

He added: “Our teams have worked incredibly hard throughout the pandemic to maintain as much elective and planned activity as possible, supported by innovations such as our extensive use of day case surgeries. “This is reflected in our waiting times where our performance against the national 18-week referral to treatment target is the best in the country.

“Our model, with the specialist emergency care hospital at Cramlington, means that our surgical centres of excellence at Wansbeck, North Tyneside and Hexham have continued to carry out thousands and thousands of procedures over the past two years.”

NHS rules state that patients who have their operations cancelled at the last minute must be offered a new operation date within four weeks.

The figures show just five of the affected patients at the Trust had to wait more than 28 days for a new date.

Nationally, the NHS cancelled 19,300 elective surgeries for non-clinical reasons over the three-month period – equating to 1.1% of all activity – a similar proportion to the same quarter in 2019-20, prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the percentage of patients waiting more than a month for operations to be rescheduled rose sharply from nine per cent to 24%.

That meant there were more than 4,600 breaches of the NHS standard.

Common non-clinical reasons for last-minute cancellations include a lack of hospital beds, surgeons being unavailable, emergency cases taking precedence, equipment failure, staff shortages and patients nor wishing to go ahead with operations.

Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said the NHS needed more staff and resources to tackle the problem.

She added: "Every cancellation just adds to the backlog NHS England is trying to clear and the growing number of patients waiting for treatment.

"For individual patients, having long-awaited surgery cancelled at the last minute can be devasting, especially if they've no idea when they will finally be called in.

"The challenge for the NHS is managing to treat all the people currently waiting for care and treatment, while also managing patients newly seeking care.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said the Government's plan to tackle the Covid-19 backlog and deliver long term reform would mean 99% of patients would wait less than a year for treatment by 2024.