Cancelled Operations (Hansard, 15 January 2003)

§ Dr. Evan Harris
To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list(a) the number of operations cancelled at the last minute and (b) the number of patients not readmitted within 28 days of their operation being cancelled in each of the last four quarters in (i) England and (ii) each NHS region. [89650]

§ Mr. Hutton
Quarterly data are collected on the number of operations cancelled by the hospital for non-clinical reasons (i) at the last minute (ie on the day patients are due to arrive or after arrival in hospital or on the day of their operation) and (ii) on the day of surgery.
The NHS Plan cancelled operations guarantee has been in place since 1 April 2002 and since then, data have been collected on the number of patients not admitted within 28 days of cancellation on the day of surgery.
Data have been aggregated to strategic health authority level since 1 April 2002. Trust level data have been collected since Quarter 1 2001–02. Prior to this, data were collected at health authority level.
Data are available in the Library and on the Department's website at www.doh.gov.uk/hospitalactivity/data requests.htm.

§ Tim Loughton
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many operations were cancelled for NHS patients in each of the last six years. [89929]

§ Mr. Hutton
Quarterly data are collected on the number of operations cancelled by the hospital for non-clinical reasons (i) at the last minute (i.e. on the day patients are due to arrive or after arrival in hospital or on the day of their operation) and (ii) on the day of surgery. These data are available in the Library and on the Department's website at www.doh.gov.uk/hospitalactivity/data—requests.htm.

§ Chris Grayling
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many operations have been cancelled by the NHS in each of the past eight quarters; and what percentage of these cancellations have not been rebooked(a) within a month and (b) for a date within two months, broken down by (i) Strategic Health Authority Area and (ii) NHS trust. [90433]

§ Mr. Hutton
[holding answer 13 January 2003]: Quarterly data are collected on the number of operations cancelled by the hospital for non- clinical reasons (i) at the last minute (i.e. on the day patients are due to arrive or after arrival in hospital or on the day of their operation) and (ii) on the day of surgery. Data are also collected on the number of patients not admitted within 28 days of cancellation on the day of surgery.
Data have been aggregated at strategic health authority (StHA) level since Quarter 1 of 2002–03. Prior to that, data was aggregated at regional level. Trust level data has been collected since Quarter 1 of 2001–02. Prior to this data were collected at health authority level. All the data can be accessed in the Library and on the Department's website at: www.doh.gov.uk/hospitalactivity/datarequests.htm.
675W
Since 1 April 2002, the NHS Plan cancelled operations guarantee has been in place. National Health Service trusts are performance managed on their performance against the NHS Plan guarantee by StHAs. Patients re-booked within 28 days are not separately identified in the data and may have had their operation cancelled in the previous quarter. Therefore, it is not statistically valid to calculate the percentage of patients who have been re-booked as a proportion of those cancelled.