Hospitals cut operations as doctors to strike

Four out of five hospitals are cancelling planned operations and outpatients appointments today as a result of doctors taking industrial action over their pensions, according to the British Medical Association. The claim suggests thousands of patients will be inconvenienced by the first industrial action by doctors since 1975. But the doctors’ union did not release exact numbers of elective procedures such as cataract removals and hip replacements, or follow-up appointments for various medical conditions, which would be affected. “While the BMA has worked to ensure that all emergency and urgent care will be provided, planning with (NHS) managers indicates that at least four in every five NHS employers in secondary care across the UK have postponed some non-urgent cases”, the union said. The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, warned last week that up to 30,000 operations, 58,000 diagnostic tests and over 200,000 outpatient appointments might have to be rescheduled because of the doctors’ action. NHS organisations have been writing to patients with appointments today to warn them they are being postponed. The impact of the action varies widely from hospital to hospital. Salisbury Foundation Trust in Wiltshire has been rescheduling some non-urgent operations and outpatient appointments. But the Royal Surrey County hospital in Guildford said very few of its doctors intended to take part in the action and it expected that the great majority of its services would be running normally. The University Hospital of North Staffordshire expects to cancel just three non-urgent operations and eight non-urgent outpatient appointments. Barely one in five GPs surgeries plan to take action, according to a survey by the medical magazine Pulse. Lansley has sought to weaken support for the action among other NHS staff by claiming that if doctors succeed in resisting changes to their pensions, other NHS workers who earn less will have to contribute even more in order to keep the NHS pension scheme sustainable. “If doctors’ contribution rates were to remain unchanged then a nurse earning £30,000 a year would see their take-home pay fall by around £100 per month simply to cover the shortfall. In seeking a more generous deal for doctors, they are seeking a more unfair deal for NHS staff overall,” Lansley said. “The government has offered a fair and generous pension deal which will see doctors in future retiring on £68,000 a year. The public — and many inconvenienced patients — in London will not understand why doctors are going on strike when they have this excellent pension deal on the table. I hope that many doctors think again about whether taking industrial action tomorrow is the right thing to do,” the minister added. The BMA seems resigned to its action not gaining much public backing. Dr Hamish Meldrum, chair of the BMA’s council, said: “We are not expecting members of the public to support the action, but we hope they can understand why doctors have been driven to this point. “Doctors are now being asked to work even longer, up to 68 years of age, and contribute even more, meaning doctors have to pay up to twice as much as civil servants on the same pay for the same pension.” The union points out that the action “is not a strike as the term is usually understood”, as doctors will still be at their usual place of work but dealing with only urgent cases and not handling routine ones. It ran adverts in 80 regional newspapers across the UK yesterday to explain its decision. Dean Royles, director of NHS Employers, said: “Whatever the BMA call it, if your treatment has been cancelled or care to your family interrupted, it will feel like a strike to you. We will work as hard we can to get care rescheduled as quickly and as safely as possible.”from gulf times.