North East emergency care bosses seek to reassure public
The North East and Cumbria Urgent and Emergency Care Network say they have a plan, after January's non-urgent operations were cancelled
Last updated 4th Jan 2018
North East health bosses say they do have plans for tackling the NHS crisis, after non urgent operations in January were cancelled yesterday.
The Health Secretary yesterday apologised that some operations have been pushed back until the end of the month, saying this is the busiest time of the year for the NHS.
Dr Stewart Findlay, is co-chair of the North East's urgent and emergency care network said:
"I would like to thank our hard working front line NHS staff, who yet again have made sure that we focus our efforts on those patients who need our clinical care the most over this busy holiday period.
"The guidance issued by NHS England is in line with the winter plans for dealing with times of increased pressure on front line services.
"The guidance advises that trusts can delay planned, non-urgent operations to release staff and resources and capacity to deal with more urgent cases, ensuring that those patients in the greatest immediate need get the support they require.
"Each hospital is different so they can choose how they do this and our region’s hospital trusts will try to minimise disruption to those patients with non urgent planned operations when making their decisions.
"It’s very important that patients with planned operations, procedures or outpatient appointments should attend as normal unless they are specifically contacted by their hospital and asked not to. Only those patients contacted directly will have appointments delayed and these will be rearranged. Cancer diagnosis and treatment appointments will not be delayed."
The Government yesterday announced more than £337 million to help with the problems - and we're expecting to hear stats from NHS England later about how A&Es are coping.