Jayne Dowle: Patients put back to the end of NHS queue

In fact, if you have ever had to deal, at any level, with the colossus which is the NHS, you will understand why targets made sense. They gave patients power. If your doctor or clinician didn't hit their target, you had clear and legitimate grounds for complaint. Maximum wait time in A&E – four hours. See your GP within two days. Doctor's referral to treatment within 18 weeks, much quicker if cancer is suspected.

Now we hear that to cut costs, targets are to be scrapped, or "relaxed", with immediate effect. That puts us, the patients, right at the back of the queue. My friend, who is a senior NHS manager, tells me that if you dig deep enough into the NHS constitution, you will still find legal guarantees regarding waiting times. But apparently, this could be up for a re-think too. And how many people actually know that, would know where to look to find the evidence, and have the ability to untangle the jargon and tackle their consultant with it? I certainly didn't know until I was told. Those simple headline targets made it easy for everyone, regardless of age, background or confidence, to understand what they were entitled to.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, says that targets are politically-motivated. You can kind of see his point. Targets are associated with all that is big and bossy about centralist government. But, as much as I, too, hate pointless bureaucracy, we're talking about dealing with individuals at the acute end of healthcare here.

Targets didn't always work, but those of us with long memories of long afternoons in the doctor's surgery and endless waiting lists will appreciate just what a difference simply having them actually made. Those of us who have experienced serious illness in the family also appreciate the efforts that most NHS managers made to hit those targets. My husband had a brain tumour in 2001. He is fit and well now, but has to have an annual MRI scan to check that it remains benign.

We nearly fell over in shock the first time we got an appointment card inviting him to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield on a Sunday morning. A Sunday morning? For a MRI scan? But, talking to the receptionist, it became clear that the MRI scanner was working pretty much round the clock so the department could "meet its targets".

We weren't complaining. It meant that Dave was then seen quickly by the consultant, our worries about his health were put at bay, and at that

quiet time of day, we got to park outside the door. And I was more than pleased to see a hospital, which my taxes help to pay for, being used at full capacity.

You might be wondering why the Government has so rapidly abandoned something which patients obviously find useful, and which gives health professionals a framework to adhere to.

Well, in the next three years, management costs across the NHS must be reduced by 30 per cent. These savings have to come from somewhere, and diverting staff away from achieving targets and towards ways of cutting costs, shedding jobs in the process, will be one way to do it. But, if we're talking about targets, why pick on the patients? Any NHS worker will tell you that the whole system is rife with tick-box target exercises; the Care Quality Commission, Health and Safety Executive, Use of Resources Audits, World Class Commissioning, Freedom of Information requests... And next up on the agenda, weekly, instead of monthly, checks for C Difficile infection will soon be joining this information overload.

Well, if we're talking politically-motivated, this certainly is. The new Government will be able to shout that it is cracking down on dirty hospitals better than Labour ever did. By the time most of us ever get to be treated in one, however, those shiny new stats will be way out of date.

If the Health Secretary really wants to make inroads into NHS costs, then he could start with taking on a few of that lot and asking himself if they are all really necessary. That would be even braver than causing chaos in A&E. And, I am assuming he has realised that when he has cut targets, cut management costs, and cut jobs, the staff that are left will be even more stretched, spending more of their precious time filling in audits and assessments than treating patients.

Save us money by all means Mr

Lansley, but slow down, take stock and don't try to save the NHS at the expense of sick people.