Scandal of NHS cancelled operations

The National Health Service is cancelling more than 620 operations every day because of administrative blunders, it has been claimed. Mistakes, like forgetting to book operating theatres, led to about 162,500 procedures being abandoned in 2005. The numbers also appear to have gone up by a quarter over the past three years, according to newly-released figures.

Conservative MP Grant Shapps highlighted the figures after using Freedom of Information laws to request data from all NHS trusts in England and Wales.

Estimates for the total number of cancellations were calculated on the basis of the 55 bodies that responded.

Mr Shapps said: "At a fairly conservative guess, this could be costing more than £150m a year."

Cancellations had also been classed as administrative errors if they were caused by notes being lost or by miscommunication between hospital departments.

Mr Shapps said the problem was that trusts were being sent a "constant stream of diktats" from above, with too many fixed targets. They want to get people out of A&E in time and things like this slip," he added.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13547191,00.html

Health Direct notes that it is a change to hear of NHS operations being cancelled through incompetence rather than through funding cutbacks: March 10, 2005 Great Ormond St hospital cancelled operations and wards when Great Ormond Street hospital has revealed they have had to cancel operations, close beds and close wards because of a funding crisis. The famous children's hospital blamed a systemic financial crisis.