Follow-up sessions cut after operations

The survey of all 168 hospital trusts in England found the national ratio of patient follow-ups to operations had gone down for a second successive year, prompting fears from GPs that patients are being discharged back to family doctors too early.

In 2008-9, the average was 2.36 follow-up appointments for every operation, but this dropped to 2.32 in 2009-10 and 2.22 in 2010-11, according to Pulse magazine.

But Yorkshire’s hospital trusts remained above the national average, despite falls in the last 12 months as primary care trusts intensified efforts to save cash.

The Wakefield-based Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust rose from 2.58 to 2.6 in 2009-10 but has since declined to 2.32.

Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust remained well above the national benchmark, with a ratio of 3.12 in 2010-11, although this was a drop from 3.30 the previous year.

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust bucked the national trend with a rise from 1.98 in 2009-10 to 2.19.

Nationally, this translates to 1.2 million fewer follow-up appointments on 2009-10 levels and 1.6m fewer than 2008-9.

Richard Hoey, editor of Pulse, said: “Reducing post-operative checks has been seen as an easy target by NHS managers looking for efficiencies, and of course sometimes reductions might be appropriate, but often they will leave patients short of the follow-up care they would expect.

“Hospitals will probably argue that many of these checks have not been culled from the NHS, but are simply taking place in general practice instead.

“But in fact GPs are receiving no extra funding to take on this new work, and in any case may not always be trained to pick up post-operative complications.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “All patients with a clinical need for a follow-up appointment in hospital should have one.

“We have not set targets to reduce the number of follow-up appointments and have no plans to do this.”