Four trusts cancel planned operations as covid pressures mount

The four acute trusts in Kent and Medway will still carry out cancer and urgent electives, but other work is being postponed. Relatively few elective operations are usually carried out around Christmas and New Year, meaning the county is likely to see little or no elective work for the next four weeks.

In a covid update bulletin issued last night, the Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group acknowledged the pressure hospitals across its area were under but stressed cancer and other urgent operations would go ahead.

It added: “However, we are now pausing non-urgent elective services. This will allow staff to move to support the increased number of covid-19 patients.

“Initially this will be for a two-week period. We will keep this under weekly review and will contact individual patients where appointments need to be rescheduled.”

Medway Foundation Trust – the trust hardest hit by the second wave of covid in England – had already cancelled some elective work, as more than 50 per cent of its beds were occupied by covid patients.

The area’s other trusts – Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust, Dartford and Gravesham Trust and East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust – had initially been less severely affected, but pressure now growing across the patch seems to have prompted the decision.

Figures seen by HSJ show that as of Sunday, covid-19 admissions were still rising on a rolling seven-day basis at Kent’s hospitals. New hospital covid cases at Medway were still high but were showing signs of stabilising, and admissions were growing consistently at MTW and East Kent. They were also growing, but less steeply and at a lower level, at Dartford and Gravesham.

Other parts of the country showing growth in new covid cases in hospital in recent days include Essex, Northampton, Bedfordshire, and some parts of London. There are also many hospitals seeing the number of new cases flatline rather than fall, meaning that at national level, the rate of decline is slow.

Covid cases in the seven days to 2 December were 4,828 in Kent and 1,679 in Medway. Unlike other parts of England, the Kent and Medway is also seeing in hospital deaths continue to rise rapidly — at 98 in the seven days to 28 November, a rise of more than half compared with the week before. It is the only health system where deaths are still rising so rapidly.

Individual council areas have also recorded very high numbers of cases – the Medway area topped 600 cases per 100,000 people in the last few days and Medway and Swale have vied for the highest rates in England over the last week. Both are significantly deprived – as is Thanet, the area with the third highest rates in Kent.

The CCG was already facing major challenges with planned care, with more than 3,500 people on the list for more than a year, as of September, and under two thirds of referrals being treated within 18 weeks. Nearly 130,000 people were waiting for treatment, of whom nearly 39,000 had been waiting more than 26 weeks.

In December last year, the four acute trusts had slightly more than 17,000 elective admissions, including day cases. A further 1,000 were carried out in the private sector or outside the county.

The independent sector had been providing support for elective work during the first part of the pandemic but this has reduced since the summer. It is not known whether NHS-funded elective operations will continue in private hospitals over the next few weeks.