Couples are being told their IVF treatment is being suspended or axed completely as NHS trusts battle to cut costs, it emerged today. Primary care trusts are also making patients wait months longer for common operations in an attempt to slash their budgets.
A shortage of funding has hit thousands of patients waiting for operations such as hip and knee operations. NHS trusts are planing to save £20billion by 2014 to cope with an aging population, and overall health funding is receiving limited increases.
Groups have attacked the plans, calling the cuts 'desperate' and 'appalling' but figures show that many PCTs are facing a cash crisis.
At least nine PCTs have culled IVF treatment, despite guidance that infertile women should be given three cycles of treatment.
Susan Seenan of the Infertility Network said she was angry about the cutting of IVF treatment.
'Infertility is an illness, people who cannot have children have no cloice over the matter...They deserve medical treatment the same way anyone suffering from any other illness does,' she says. Katherine Murphy, head of the Patient's Association told the Sunday Telegraph: 'These decisions will absolutely ruin the quality of life for people.
'For years the NHS has wasted money paying managers over-inflated salaries. Now times are getting tight, and it's not the bureaucrats who suffer, but the most vulnerable groups of patients.'
She says the Patient's Association has been contacted by several elderly people worried about the cancellation of their operations, with many reporting long delays in seeing specialists at pain management clinics. Other areas which could be affected include non-urgent diabetes, rheumatology and oral treatment. Reviews of other non-urgent specialist procedures are also taking place.
The Health Service Journal reports that many trusts have changed the rules to reduce the number of patients who are allowed surgery.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'We have been very clear that NHS organisations should not interpret efficiency savings as budget and service cuts.
'We would expect the NHS to make decisions locally, based on the clinical needs of their patients and with regard to the need to make the most efficient use of funding.'
Article: 5th December 2010 www.dailymail.co.uk
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