Surgeons raise alarm over waiting

By Branwen Jeffreys Health correspondent, BBC News  

Surgeons say patients in some components of England have spent months waiting in pain attributable to delayed operations or new restrictions on who qualifies for treatment.

In many areas routine surgery was placed on hold for months, whereas in several others new thresholds for hip and knee replacements are introduced.

The moves are a part of the NHS drive to search out £20bn potency savings by 2015.

The government said performance ought to be measured by outcomes not numbers.

Surgeons have described the delays faced by patients as "devastating and cruel". Peter Kay, the president of the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA), says they've become increasingly pissed off that hip and knee replacements are being targeted as the way of finding savings.

We've began to get reports over the last 9 months that access to those services are being restricted”

End Quote Peter Kay, president of BOA

"GPs were told not thus send as several patients to hospital, perhaps to delay referrals till the top of the money year whereas maybe introducing thresholds for surgery."

He says that merely delaying surgery by one suggests that or another doesn't improve the end result for patients as their condition will deteriorate.

"The double jeopardy is that patients wait longer in pain, and after they have the operation, the result may not are pretty much as good because it otherwise would are had they'd it early. "