English hospitals ‘may be cancelling more operations than expected’

A new report has indicated that the number of operations that English hospitals cancel each year may have been underestimated.

Figures obtained by BBC News have indicated that tens of thousands of operations may have been cancelled by English hospitals last year without being officially counted, due to the fact that hospitals are only compelled to record cancellations on the day of an operation or admission, but not those prior to that.

NHS England's official figures show less than one percent of operations are cancelled at the last minute, equivalent to 71,370 cancellations. However, when asked to provide figures for operations cancelled one to three days before a patient was due to be admitted, 74 English NHS trusts confirmed they had cancelled 41,474 operations within that period.

This was much higher than the figure of 33,400 last-minute cancellations recorded for the same trusts in the official figures.

Saffron Cordery, director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, said: "Some of these may be due to poor scheduling and a lack of effective planning, but this is very often not the case."

She explained that a general lack of availability of critical care beds, anaesthetists and surgeons is often behind these cancellations, as well as an unexpectedly significant rise in the number of emergency cases requiring theatre time.

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