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Surgery delayed to save money By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor     HOSPITALS have been ordered to delay operations and remove patients from waiting lists in order to save money, The Times has learnt. The move comes a day after Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, admitted that the NHS was more than half a billion pounds in the red. A letter seen by The Times reveals that a group of London hospitals has been told by NHS managers to postpone surgery for as long as possible in order to cut the trust’s debt. Other hospitals are telling patients that...

 In "Die in Britain, survive in U.S.," the cover article of a recent issue of the Spectator, a British magazine, James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain's universal healthcare system. Among women with breast cancer, for example, there's a 46 percent chance of dying from it in Britain, versus a 25 percent chance in the United States. "Britain has one of worst survival rates in the advanced world," writes Bartholomew, "and America has the best." If you're a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, you have a 57 percent chance of it killing you in Britain. In the United States, the...

Fewer patients from Wales are being treated at NHS hospitals in England despite massive rises in Welsh waiting lists, Welsh Conservative health spokesman Jonathan Morgan has revealed. Official figures show that the number of patients being sent for treatment in England has fallen by 3.2 per cent in the last three years. The revelation comes at a time when waiting lists in Wales have soared by 85 per cent in five years. More than 311,000 people are currently waiting for treatment on the Welsh NHS. Welsh Conservatives have consistently called for 'out-of Wales' options to be implemented to treat the...

The number of deaths caused by hospital superbugs has tripled in the past decade with London worst hit, new figures show today. The first major study of its kind into the most common infection, MRSA, comes two months after the Evening Standard alerted Londoners to the growing danger of superbugs, which thrive on dirty wards and poor staff hygiene. A Standard investigation revealed that more than 100 patients a month in the capital are being struck down by the drug-resistant MRSA infection which, while not always fatal, can kill in hours. Now the situation is being officially recognised with a...

The scandal of Britain's filthy hospitals is laid bare in a report published today. Hospital bosses themselves admitted that medical equipment is not cleaned, doctors do not wash their hands and there are too few staff to prevent soaring rates of deadly infections picked up on the wards.