You'll have to go home - we've run out of cash (From The Northern Echo)

You'll have to go home - we've run out of cash

6:01am Friday 9th February 2007 in

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A PATIENT in so much pain he was given morphine was told by doctors that his operation had been cancelled because the hospital had run out of money.

Matthew Fowler-Jones was told he must leave his hospital bed and go home, despite being told by a consultant the operation "needed doing".

The 26-year-old, who was on a no-solids diet for three days in readiness for the surgery, was given a supply of powerful painkillers and discharged.

He was told his routine gallstone operation had been cancelled because there was no money left in the NHS kitty this financial year to pay for it.

Mr Fowler-Jones, of Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was twice admitted and discharged from the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, after suffering agonising abdominal pains over the past fortnight.

After the operation was initially cancelled, he was again admitted to the hospital in agony days later.

He was again discharged, once his condition was stabalised.

"The consultant told me that due to the financial situation, there is going to be a delay of between 16 and 20 weeks before the operation could go ahead," said Mr Fowler-Jones, a local government officer who works in Northallerton.

The case came to light on the same day the Conservatives released figures showing how the NHS had slipped a further £38m into the red.

They said an analysis of figures showed the NHS was forecasting a deficit of more than £132m - a deterioration of £38.4m since the end of September last year.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley told The Northern Echo: "These patients are being deliberately obstructed in accessing the treatment they need, despite hospitals having paid for the consultants and other NHS staff who can treat them.

"There is no point in paying these NHS staff to do nothing in the last quarter of the financial year solely because Patricia Hewitt has put her own job on the line by promising to get the NHS back into the black by April.

"Even the Department of Health must realise what a false economy this is.

"Rather than allow the NHS to slam on the brakes in such a perverse way, the department should encourage health authorities in financial difficulty to maximise the number of patients treated from within available resources."

But the Department of Health said the figures represented "back-of-the-envelope supposition" and the NHS would be back in balance by the end of the financial year.

Emergency cash-cutting measures were recently introduced by the heavily-indebted North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust (PCT).

The PCT is overspent by £45m - a bigger debt than any other NHS primary care trust in the country.

In an effort to cut its budget by £10m by the end of the financial year, it has introduced a package of temporary measures affecting hospitals in the North Yorkshire area.

These includes new assessments of emergency patients, who will be sent home when it is considered clinically safe.

Other measures include suspending a range of procedures such as in vitro fertilisation therapy, epidurals for back pain, lumbar x-rays, joint injections, and the removal of non-malignant skin lesions.

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