A LEADING surgeon has explained why he felt compelled to write a letter to highlight bureaucracy and inefficiency in the health service.

He told GB News: “My letter was in response to the previous articles that have been talking about weekend working, which is also a big problem. But I thought it was important to also talk about the weekend-weekday working problems which increased in size all the time, when I was a consultant.

“It’s not just me who’s saying this, every consultant I’ve worked with and speak with has the same problem.

“And there’s been a lot of research done, which shows that there are massive problems with work workplace inefficiency in the NHS, in my sphere, obviously, around theatres. There are some very simple measures to deal with which haven’t been undertaken.”

He told Michael Portillo: “The other problem is, of course, that not everyone’s signed up to the priority, which is the patient’s co-operation, rather like the toilet attendant…knowing that they are part of the team.

“It’s always multifactorial, it’s always somebody else’s fault. You send for the patients, and then you find there aren’t enough porters on wards or doing something else and then you find that somebody hasn’t forgotten to send the patient.

“Then you find that the patient isn’t ready, despite the fact that they’ve been on a published list for the last 24 hours.

“Before that happens, of course, you can’t start the list until you know there’s a bed available, because if they’re going back to a critical care bed afterwards, the critical care bed has to be available as well, otherwise they can’t you can’t start the operation.”

He told GB News: “So you have to have a bed to start with for the patient to come from, which means just making sure that patients have been discharged to – so back to home or social care. And of course, there’s a massive problem with lack of social care beds, which is increasing.

“And then there’s where do you send them afterwards? So both of those things have to be ticked. And of course, most of the managers don’t come on until nine o’clock in the morning. So unsurprisingly, we have to wait till about 10 o’clock before anything happens.”