HUNDREDS of patients face waits of more than a year for elective surgery, newly published papers have revealed.
The report, which was due to be presented at today’s Health Advisory Board meeting, highlighted that operating theatres lost “more than a quarter” of their capacity last year due to a catalogue of failures including unusable ventilation systems and broken microscopes.
At the end of last year, 400 patients had been waiting over a year for elective surgery, the papers show. The waiting list grew in the second half of 2024 and the issues could continue until March this year, the report warns.
A number of equipment and facility failures caused theatres to close, and they were not all resolved before the report was written in December.
“During that time, almost a quarter of elective theatre capacity had been lost,” the report says.
It explains that during maintenance work in August, workers found an “issue” with the ventilation system in one of the theatres, which was taken out of use immediately.
An assessment found the ventilation to be “unsafe to maintain adequate clean air required to operate”.
During the repairs, a panel failed in another theatre, also reducing capacity.
And two ophthalmic microscopes were put out of action by a power surge “resulting in both scopes failing at the same time” – meaning no cataract surgery could be done in Jersey.
As a result, 32 patients’ surgeries were cancelled in October.
“Availability of equipment in this area is being reviewed to future-proof [it],” the report says.
The document also reveals that theatre utilisation in Jersey remains at less than 70%. The NHS’s “Getting It Right First Time” programme – which reviewed the Island’s services last summer – sets a target of 85% for English hospitals.
On-the-day cancellations had gone down significantly in December, but the report predicts that more surgeries would face last-minute cancellations in January because of increased emergency and acute patients.
It adds: “Since December 2024, the Hospital has experienced an increase in requirement for urgent beds, as has been the case across the UK.
“This demand for acute beds has again restricted the elective programme of work and in line with winter surge, bed capacity could well be limited until March 2025.”
