London hospital cancels operations due to staff shortages

Some non-urgent operations at Kings’ College Hospital have been cancelled due to the recent surge in Covid cases, due to higher demand and staff sickness.

Guy’s, St Thomas’ Imperial and Barts NHS Trust have also warned that “routine and non-urgent” operations may be called off in the coming weeks.

A spokesperson from Kings’ College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said some non-urgent operations had already been cancelled this month, due to higher than average levels of Covid-related staff infection and self-isolation.

They added “We’ve taken the decision to postpone a small number of outpatient and non-clinically urgent operations due to staff sickness, which is being reviewed on a daily basis.”

Alistair Chesser, Barts’ chief medical officer, said services were currently running as normal with staff redeployment, but contingency plans remained in place.

He said they were anticipating a “significant number of admissions” of people with Omicron in the coming weeks, but did not know how many, so were “preparing for all possible eventualities.”

Professor Tim Orchard, chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said staff were being redeployed to cover absence, currently running at about 7 per cent of the workforce, and the trust was planning with limited data.

He added “The concern is that, given the rapid spread of the variant, even if severe disease continues to be more limited, a small proportion of a large number could still have a big impace on the NHS, most likely beginning in early January.”

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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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