UK Healthcare

High-risk patients 'Forced to wait'

Adapted From Report by Nicole Martin, Telegraph 26 July 2001.

Patients with potentially life threatening illnesses are being denied urgent operations by hospitals desperate to meet tough Government waiting list targets, according to the National Audit Office [25 July 2001].

Doctors under pressure to cut queues are being forced to put the targets above the clinical needs of patients, according to the NAO report. More than half of the consultants surveyed said that stringent NHS targets meant they gave preference to patients waiting for the longest for operations regardless of how ill they were.

Of the 558 questioned in England, 133 admitted that they frequently treated patients approaching the maximum 18-month target for in-patient surgery instead of others in urgent need of treatment.

The findings were seized upon as further evidence that the Government was more interested in reaching targets than in patient care.

The report, 'In-patient and out-patient Waiting in the NHS', showed that the drive to cut waiting lists was forcing some doctors to neglect patients with serious illnesses in favour of less urgent cases.

Pie chart of people of the hospital waiting list

Some patients with bladder tumours had their operations delayed so that routine operations delayed so that routine operations to reverse vasectomies could be performed on men approaching the 18-month deadline. Twenty-two percent said they had rearranged definitions of waiting. In all but one case, moving patients to out-patients lists meant they were lost from in patient lists.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that it was 'unacceptable' that some patients were being treated in a different order to their medical needs. Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat health spokesman said, 'Ministers have a lot of explaining to do. They were warned that political posturing on waiting lists would lead to longer waits for seriously ill patients.'

In 1997, Labour promised to reduce lists by 100,000 from the figure they inherited from the Tories. This has been achieved but there are still more than one million people waiting for in-patient treatment in England, including 246,000 who have waited more then 6 months and 42,000 for more than a year.