Fire leads to cancelled operations at Milton Keynes Hospital

Little detail of the incident is given in board papers for the trust’s April 27 meeting. However, the introduction to trust’s performance report says that “due to fire this month activity was temporarily disrupted and has affected this month’s figures.”

The hospital’s performance dashboard for March shows there were 17 last-minute cancellations, against a target of 16 or fewer for the month. The report said: “17 procedures cancelled owing to recent fire, without which month would have been within plan.” However the trust would still have been over plan for 2010-11, as the 17 brought the year to date total to 247, against a maximum target of 200.

The trust also fell behind on an operating theatre utilisation target. Theatres were in use 83.5 per cent of the time they were available in the year to date, just under the 85 per cent target. The figure for March alone was 87.8 per cent, down on the previous month’s figure of 94 per cent.

There were 12 cancelled sessions in March, again better than the month’s target of 18, but substantially worse than the February figure of three. Over 2010-11 there were 291 such cancellations, against a target of 216 or less.

The report says there was an “increase in cancellations in month owing to fire.”