Hospitals cancelled record number of urgent operations last year | The Guardian
The latest figures mean that 17,598 patients have had their urgent operation cancelled over the past five years [Image: Christopher Furlong/Getty].
Hospitals in England cancelled 4,093 urgent procedures during 2016, equivalent to 341 per month. This was 8% more than the 3,777 scrapped in 2015 and up by 27% on the 3,216 such operations cancelled during 2014.
The latest figures mean 17,598 patients have had their urgent operation cancelled over the past five years, often at the last minute, despite their condition requiring surgery without delay.
The NHS England data shows that hospitals also cancelled 38,129 non-urgent elective operations between April and October, the largest number yet recorded for those six months.
A further 11 people died from flu last week, bringing the total to 53 since the start of December, and 65 needed to be treated in an intensive care or high-dependency unit.
Source: Hospitals cancelled record number of urgent operations last year | Society | The Guardian
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Many of those whose surgical procedures have been cancelled may have been able to return to work following surgery. It cannot be making financial savings to the state if people are being prevented from leading productive lives and being compelled to claim state benefits. What an odd mindset this Tory government has. Surely, keeping folk in pain and distress that can be alleviated by surgery, amounts to cruel and inhumane treatment. Much sympathy for NHS consultants, who know what they need to do but are being prevented from doing so by intolerable financial restraints.
Cut capacity whilst the demand is growing and this is the logical outcome you have to wonder why the government the CCG’s and all the other letters involved in managing the Health service didn’t see this coming. Maybe if they had stayed with the more streamlined District health authorities there would have been someone in a position to actually do something about it.
The NHS is being deliberately underfunded, understaffed, in order to privatise it.
Professor Noam Chomsky:
“That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
Noam Chomsky,