NHS Confederation responds to data collected by the Labour Party on cancellations of operations

Responding to the data collected by the Labour Party which shows staff shortages are the reason operations are being cancelled, Matthew Taylor chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: 

“No health leader wants to be in a position where operations have to be cancelled and in the vast majority of cases, these procedures go ahead as planned. When operations have to be postponed, the NHS makes every effort to communicate early with patients and to reschedule the operations as soon as possible.

“The NHS has made strong progress in clearing the backlogs, ensuring that virtually everyone who had been waiting two or more years for a scheduled procedure got one by the government’s summer target. However, there is no escaping the fact that staffing shortages and pressures hugely limit the NHS’s capacity to do even more, and the prospects of winter pressures coupled with the threat of industrial action make this more worrying.

“Also and as the data released by Labour shows, there are other reasons why operations may need to be cancelled, including bed capacity. With 13,300 hospital beds currently taken up by patients who are ready to be discharged from hospital and around 95% of beds currently occupied, this remains a live concern.

“Health leaders welcome Labour’s commitment to significantly expand the number of training posts for doctors, midwives, nurses and health visitors and they call on any future government to ensure that the analysis in the NHS’s workforce plan next year is taken forward.”