Labor says 30,000 NHS operations have been canceled due to lack of staff

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Around 30,000 operations were canceled last year in NHS hospitals in England due to a shortage of staff, new figures show.

< p>Data collected from freedom of information requests by the Labor Party showed that staff shortages were the most common reason surgeries were not taking place for non-clinical reasons.

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Some 50 of the NHS's 122 acute trusts responded to Labor requests for details of cancellations over the past year. Extrapolating from these figures, Labor has calculated that up to 158,000 operations are likely to have been canceled for non-clinical reasons in 2021-22, more than double the figure of 79,000 in 2018-19.

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From an estimated 10,000 were emergency operations, 2,500 were operations for cancer patients and 8,000 were operations on children. And about one in five of those whose procedures were postponed at the last minute had to wait more than a month for their appointment to be rearranged, according to the party.

But the Ministry of Health and Social Care (DHSC), led by Steve Barclay, said it was "misleading" to draw conclusions about the overall number of cancellations based on figures from a proportion of trusts.

Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the delays were the result of 'crippling labor shortages in the NHS'. He highlighted the government's decision to reimpose the cap of 7,500 medical school places in England this year after the restriction was lifted in 2020 and 2021.

Mr. Streeting said a Labor government would double the number of places with the aim of training 15,000 new doctors a year, and would also train 10,000 new nurses and midwives and 5,000 new health visitors, while doubling the number of qualified district nurses every year.

The plans would be paid for by abolishing non-domiciled tax status, which allows wealthy foreign nationals to avoid paying UK tax while living here.

“Patients are being forced to wait longer for life-saving operations because the Conservatives have not trained enough staff over the past 12 years,” Mr Streeting said. “The cancellation of operations is very disruptive to patients and prevents them from moving on with their lives."

He said the seriousness of the problem was highlighted by the case of a 72-year-old woman from Stoke who underwent two operations to remove er a brain tumor canceled in September, the hospital blaming the lack of available beds.

"The work with...