Operating theatres burning through cash by sitting empty until a bed is available for patients, top surgeon warns

A leading surgeon cautions that operating rooms are wasting money by remaining unoccupied until a patient’s bed becomes available.

According to Lord Ara Darzi, employees who were cleaned and ready at 8 a.m. might still be waiting until around noon at the facilities, which are projected to cost 1,200 per hour.

The Commons Health Select Committee was informed by the peer that it is costly, employs roughly six or seven people, and is unoccupied.

Approximately 10% of the more than 12,000 beds available in England at any given moment are obstructed by patients who are well enough to return home but have not yet been released.

At the same time, waiting lists have reached all-time highs, with 6.3 million patients awaiting a total of 7.6 million procedures.

According to Lord Darzi, the backup also makes patients wait longer in A&E.

He claimed that one of the main causes of the decline in health service productivity is a shortage of physical space.

There would have been five or six of us when I was assigned to general cancer surgery, the surgeon said.

We still have the same number of operating rooms, but that has doubled.

According to a study, hospitals’ high physician and nurse turnover and shortage of staff result in thousands of patient deaths annually.

Staff changes and using agency workers to cover rota gaps are bad for patient care, according to experts at the University of Surrey.