Leading doctors have warned that seriously ill patients within the NHS are being neglected so that surgeons can cut waiting list targets for pre-planned operations.

The presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons, the College of Emergency Medicine and other medical institutions have said that seriously ill patients should receive "the highest levels of supportive care" and that while waiting times for operations have been reduced, that success has come at a cost.

The presidents, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, say that the high political priority given to cutting waiting lists, which dates back to when Labour came to power in 1997, has had the perverse effect of often taking surgeons away from the patients who needed them most. John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said that while improvements in routine surgery were welcome, emergency surgery had become such a low priority that no data was collected as to whether it had improved or not.

The letter comes as the government is already under intense pressure to scale back on its controversial NHS reforms which will hand over more power, and more money, to GPs. The Prime Minister has said that it is wrong to "charge ahead" with the proposals in the face of widespread opposition.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8433665/Sickest-patients-are-being-neglected-as-doctors-focus-on-waiting-list-targets.html