More than 100,000 NHS patients have operations cancelled on same day they are due to go under the knife
Patients were not even told ops had been axed until they were about to go into theatre
MORE than 100,000 operations were axed on the day patients were due to have them last year, a shocking new report suggests.
Many patients were not even told their op had been cancelled until they were waiting to be wheeled into theatre.
On average, 753 operations were scrapped daily last year, with bed and equipment shortages and scheduling errors blamed.
The Patients Association, who carried out the report, said it was "increasingly concerned" about the number of procedures axed on the day due because of the psychological impact it could have.
Figures suggest 92,739 patients waited for elective surgical procedures - such as hip or knee operations - for more than 18 weeks.
The charity sent Freedom of Information requests to 144 NHS trusts in England and found from the 112 that responded, a total of 108,432 ops could have been cancelled in total.
The report also warned that the number of patients forced to wait for more than 18 weeks for routine operations increased by 80 per cent last year.
Patients now have to wait more than 100 days for each of five common procedures - hip replacement, knee replacement, and hernia, adenoid and tonsil removals.
This is up from 2010 when the average wait was between 63 and 87 days.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: "Overall, with the significant jump in waiting times, we are very concerned that relaxing the rules on waiting-time targets as recently reported will only exacerbate an already unacceptable situation for patients."
The report, entitled Feeling The Wait, added: "There is a significant psychological burden on patients waiting to be given a date for surgery and for patients whose surgery has been cancelled."
In July, NHS England announced that hospitals would no longer be fined for missing waiting time targets in a bid to improve finances.
The government yesterday rejected the report as "misleading", and claimed that the FoI figures had been overestimated.
Instead, officials said just 71,370 operations were cancelled on the day in 2015, up from 68,886 the year before.
The Department of Health also stressed that with 7 million operations carried out each year, cancellations affect fewer than one per cent of patients.
Health Minister David Mowat said: "The latest official figures show that nine in ten patients still wait less than 18 weeks for treatment, despite the fact that last year the NHS carried out 1.6 million more operations than in 2010."
Have you had an operation cancelled moments before you were due to go into surgery? Contact holly.christodoulou@the-sun.co.uk or 0207 782 4177
