BRADFORD Teaching Hospitals Trust have apologised after more than 100 operations were cancelled at the last minute at the end of 2021.

NHS England figures for Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust show that 127 pre-booked operations were postponed on or after the day the patient was admitted between October and December.

NHS rules state that patients who have their operations cancelled at the last minute must be offered a new operation date within four weeks.

But 15 (12 per cent) of the affected patients at Bradford Teaching Hospitals Trust had to wait more than 28 days for a new date, the figures show – up from one per cent in 2019-20.

Common non-clinical reasons for last-minute cancellations include a lack of hospital beds, surgeons being unavailable, emergency cases taking precedence, equipment failure and staff shortages.

Chief Operating Officer for Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Sajid Azeb, said: “We would like to sincerely apologise to patients who have had their operations cancelled. We appreciate this is a poor experience and we are focused on getting them re-booked as soon as possible.

“We, along with the whole of the NHS, have been impacted by the pandemic and have had significant demand upon our hospital bed base caring for Covid cases.

“This has inevitably meant making difficult decisions to use our limited capacity to treat the highest priority patients: those with immediately life threatening conditions. Sadly, this has led to other patients having their operations cancelled and delayed.

“We have a robust surgical priorisation process led by our clinical teams and, in this way, make sure that the most urgent patients are able to progress with their operations.

“We are striving to get back to above pre-pandemic levels of activity in line with NHS operational planning guidance for 2022/23.”

Across England, NHS providers cancelled 19,300 elective surgeries for non-clinical reasons over the three-month period.

This equated to 1.1 per cent of all activity – a similar proportion to the same quarter in 2019-20, prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the percentage of patients waiting more than a month for operations to be rescheduled rose sharply from nine per cent to 24 per cent nationally.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said the Government's plan to tackle the Covid-19 backlog and deliver long term reform would mean 99% of patients would wait less than a year for treatment by 2024.