Written question asked by Paul Marsden (Labour) on Thursday, 6 April 2000, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 11 April 2000. It was answered by Yvette Cooper (Labour) on Tuesday, 11 April 2000 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Dept of Health

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will estimate the number of patients annually who would not have operations cancelled if the clinical applications for logistics management as used by the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital was implemented nationwide. - Includes no figures.

Answer: Mr. Paul Marsden: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will estimate the number of patients annually who would not have operations cancelled if the clinical applications for logistics management, as used by the Royal Shrewsbury hospital, was implemented nationwide. [118672] Yvette Cooper: Ministers are aware of the reduction in cancelled operations achieved by the Clinical Applications for Logistics Management (CALM) system at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Other National Health Service hospitals operating their own independent decision support systems for effective bed management also claim improvements in lowering the number of cancelled operations. Successful replication of systems such as CALM depends at least as much on people, knowledge, commitment and local circumstances as on specific technology. Therefore, it is not possible to extrapolate Royal Shrewsbury Hospital's reduced figures for cancelled operations to all other NHS hospitals.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 118672; 348 c133W
Session: 1999-00
Subjects: Admissions Hospitals Hospital beds NHS Waiting lists Surgery Management techniques Royal Shrewsbury Hospital
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk