The National Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths, established earlier this year to review surgical and anaesthetic practice, has suggested that surgeons may be performing unnecessary cancer surgery. It recognised that doctors needed to keep abreast of new developments and learn new skills, but emphasised that surgery cannot solve every problem. Consideration of the additional stress this may cause the patient and their family, as well as affording the patient dignity, had to be of prime concern. New league tables have been published by the government, which list how much it costs to carry out the same sort of operation in different local hospitals. They reveal that surgical operations in England's most expensive hospitals are 58 percent more costly than in the least expensive.
Ministers also intend to collect and publish more cost information for all hospital procedures.
Later this year there will be new performance league tables and new clinical indicators to give a properly rounded assessment of how individual hospitals are performing in terms of both efficiency and quality of care. NHS regional offices are being asked to investigate and re-set targets where there are huge unexplained variations in cost. The British Council is the United Kingdom's international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in England as a Charity.