Hospitals told to delay operations to ease debt

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Hospitals told to delay operations to ease debt

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/02/nhospital02.xml

By Graeme , Political Correspondent

Last Updated: 2:01am GMT 02/01/2007

Hospitals have been told not to operate on patients until they have been

on a waiting list for up to 20 weeks in the latest attempt to deal with

the financial crisis in the health service.

The instructions to delay treating people for as long as possible are

spelled out in leaked documents seen by The Daily Telegraph.

In one letter, hospital managers are told to work out how many

operations can be put off until after the new financial year, which

starts in April.

The documents, which were leaked to the Conservatives, are the latest

evidence of the impact that the £1.3 billion deficit run up by

front-line trusts in England is having on patient care.

The Tories said patients were having their treatment artificially

delayed because trusts were under orders from Hewitt, the

Health Secretary, to ensure that they break even.

The instructions to delay treatment for as long as possible are made in

two separate letters sent by health managers in the East of England,

which has the worst performance in the NHS.

The first letter was sent by the East of England's strategic health

authority to the chief executives of the region's primary care trusts,

which run GP clinics and pay hospitals if a patient needs treatment.

The letter, written in November by Dr , the strategic health

authority's director of commissioning, underlined the pressing need to

get a grip on budgets.

" The current end of year projections for PCTs are simply unacceptable, "

he said, before going on to set out his plans to ensure hospital

operations were " restricted to the minimum required to meet required

access targets.

" PCTs should ensure that elective activity is limited to patients on the

20-week [patient targeting list] and clinically urgent cases only. "

There is a similar message in a separate letter sent to the Queen

Hospital in King's Lynn by s, the chief executive

of the Norfolk primary care trust.

In her letter, she said her PCT was having to impose limits on the

number of patients it could pay to be treated at the hospital in the

final few months of the financial year.

" We have previously indicated that we expect you not to treat earlier

than 17 weeks from 1 December. We expect that by 1 February this wait

will have risen to not less than 18 weeks, " she wrote. " Please can you

quantify how many cases can be deferred into 2007/08 by not operating on

patients where treatments can be deferred into the new financial year

without breaching 20 weeks on this basis. "

The delays were condemned last night by Lansley, the shadow

health secretary, who was sent the leaked documents anonymously.

" These patients are being deliberately obstructed in accessing the

treatment they need, despite hospitals having paid for the staff who can

treat them, " he said.

" There is no point in paying these NHS staff to do nothing in the last

quarter of the financial year solely because Hewitt has put her

own job on the line by promising to get the NHS back into the black by

April. Even the Department of Health must realise this is false economy. "

No one from the East of England strategic health authority or the

Norfolk primary care trust could be contacted for comment yesterday.

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