NHS has rescheduled one million hospital appointments this year because of strike action

More than a million NHS hospital appointments have now been postponed this year in England because of strike action, official figures show.1The NHS England data show that 129 913 inpatient and outpatient appointments were rescheduled during last week’s strike action, which included the first ever joint action by consultants and junior doctors. Since strikes began earlier this year the cumulative total of acute inpatient and outpatient appointments rescheduled has now reached 1 015 067.But the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts and primary care organisations in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and which estimates that the strikes have cost the NHS more than £1bn to date, said that the true scale of disruption to care was much greater, because the NHS data record only cancellations on the day and not those rescheduled in advance.Rory Deighton, director of its acute care network, said, “NHS trusts now routinely pre-empt the strikes by not…
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