Cancelled elective operations (QMCO)
Published by NHS England · Official source
Update schedule
- Quarterly.
Level of detail
- NHS trust
What we show
- The number of elective (planned) operations cancelled at the last minute for non-clinical reasons
- How many of those patients were not treated within 28 days of the cancelled date
Caveats
- 'Last-minute' means cancelled on the day of, or the day before, the planned admission, for a non-clinical reason such as no bed, no staff, or an emergency taking priority. It does NOT include cancellations made by the patient or on clinical grounds.
- This is a raw count, not a rate: trusts carrying out far more elective surgery will naturally cancel more operations in absolute terms even with a low cancellation rate. We do not currently divide by activity volume, so avoid comparing trusts of very different sizes on this figure alone.
- The NHS standard is that any patient whose operation is cancelled at the last minute should be offered another date within 28 days; the 'not treated within 28 days' figure counts breaches of that standard.
- Reported per trust — the same figures apply to every hospital the trust runs, always labelled 'Trust-wide'.
- Only the most recently published quarter is currently loaded, so no trend is shown yet.
Reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains public sector information.