Cancelled operations up 10% to 18,000

ALMOST 18,000 operations were called off in hospitals last year as the number of cancellations rose substantially for the second year in a row.

Figures from the Health Service Executive show 17,761 planned procedures – 70% of them inpatient and 30% day cases – were cancelled in 2009, a 10% increase on the 2008 figure which was itself an 8.5% increase on the number in 2007.

The biggest and busiest hospitals had the highest cancellation figures, with St James’s in Dublin having by far the biggest number at 5,576. The next highest were also three Dublin facilities, Beaumont Hospital (2,200), Tallaght Hospital (1,928) and Mater Hospital (1,809), followed by Cork University Hospital (1,261).

Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin – effectively the only national children’s hospital – had 614 cancellations.

Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James O’Reilly said the figures were “scandalous” and were evidence that hospitals were trying to operate in a health system that was “broken”.

“Cancelling operations has become engrained as a policy for managing hospital gridlock brought about by overcrowded emergency departments&, a lack of acute beds for admission and the delayed discharge of patients in acute beds who need to move to more appropriate care but have no place to go,” he said.

The HSE spokeswoman said the figures had to be taken in the context of the growing activity within the hospitals. She said the 50 public acute hospitals provided a total of 1,262,000 elective procedures in day and in-patient cases last year so the cancellations accounted for 1.4% of the total – up slightly on 2007’s figure of 1.2%.

It also said procedures were rarely cancelled altogether but usually postponed and rescheduled to another date. “Cancellations can be made by the hospital or by the patient, and when the former is the case, is usually the result of unavoidable circumstances like level of emergency admissions and activity, infection control and general availability of beds or staff for the duration of the admission or procedure,” it said in a statement.

“Any postponement of a planned procedure is of course a very regrettable inconvenience for the patient, but when they are required the HSE and all its hospitals do all they can to minimise the impact on our patients. It is important to bear in mind that these procedures are, in the great majority of cases, immediately rescheduled for the next possible date.”

Dr O’Reilly said: “Cancelled operations have a real impact on patients – postponing important procedures, prolonging pain and delaying investigations which may lead to early detection of illnesses&.”