Last Year Hundreds Of Operations Cancelled By Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust

Last year statistics showed that hundreds of operations were cancelled by Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust at the last minute.

The British Medical Association (BMA) referred to the thousands of cancellations throughout England as a sign of a “creaking” NHS.

NHS England statistics show how Sherwood Forest Hospital Trust had cancelled 265 operations in 2023.

In comparison to the year before this was up by 184 operations and 212 in 2019.

It’s important to note that the cancellations were either made on the day of the appointment or after the patient had already arrived at the hospital, rather than patients being told in advance that their appointment was cancelled or needed to be rearranged.

NHS guidance states that this can happen for several reasons such as:

  • Surgeons are not available on that day;
  • Emergency cases needing to be handled or
  • Administrative errors

For when or if this happens the NHS has a target of rebooking those operations within 28 days of the cancellation, however, 25.3% of those cancellations did not reach that target at Sherwood Forest Hospital.

The BMA has said that “better planning and greater capacity” could help avoid cancellations from happening.

An NHS spokesperson commented:

“Since December 2022 the NHS has had to reschedule more than 1.3 million acute inpatient and outpatient appointments due to industrial action, and while staff have worked incredibly hard to reschedule these as quickly as possible, the ongoing strikes have meant the capacity to do this has been constrained.

Despite this, latest figures show hard working NHS staff delivered more elective activity in 2023 than in any other year since the start of the pandemic – with more than 17.3 million treated – meaning the elective waiting list has fallen for the third consecutive month in December.”

BMA Council Chair, Professor Phillip Banfield, disagrees that the strikes were causing last-minute cancellations as Trusts were given enough notice prior to the strike days in order for them to prepare and reschedule accordingly.

Comment

It is understandable that some of the last-minute cancellations can be due to the strikes however, most operations moved because of industrial action will not show in the above statistics and even if this is the case there should be contingencies in place rather than just cancelling on the day all appointments.

How can we help?Operations Cancelled Sherwood Hospital

Helen Wilkinson is a Paralegal in our expert Medical Negligence team, which has been ranked in tier one by the independently researched publication, The Legal 500.

If you have any questions in relation to the subjects discussed in this article, then please get in touch with Helen or another member of the team in Derby, Leicester, or Nottingham on 0800 024 1976 or via our online form.

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