NHS Shambles

My wife has a small cyst just to the right of her right eye. A visit to her GP resulted in her attending the Ophthalmology Department at Pembury Hospital on 30th June. On the 7th July the Department wrote to my wife's GP stating that the diagnosis was a retention cyst and the plan of action was excision and cautery under LA in minor ops clinic.

The date for this was fixed for 6th October and I took a day's holiday leave to take my wife to the hospital. Half an hour after the appointment time my wife met me in the hospital grounds and informed me she was not having the minor operation.

At the hospital she was handed a letter which states:

Dear Patient

At your consultation today you have been assessed but the treatment recommended by the consultant does not meet the criteria required for NHS funded surgery. Information on these criteria, which are agreed across Kent and Medway' can be found by accessing 'Kent & Medway list of low priority procedures and other procedures with treatment criteria or thresholds (March 2010)' on your PCT's website.


Your consultant will inform your GP that the recommended procedure falls outside the agreed criteria and explain any further management from a clinical perspective.

You will also receive a copy of the letter from the consultant to your GP.

You are therefore being discharged back to your GP.

This course of events poses a number of questions and issues.

• The date of the document referred to in the PCT letter is March 2010. Was this criteria in place when my wife visited the clinic on 30th June or the letter sent to her GP on 7th July? My suspicion is that it was not as the PCT site mentions that the review of the criteria is ongoing.
• Assuming the criteria was agreed between 7th July and 6th October why was it applied retrospectively?
• The appointment at the hospital was made on 30th June. Why was my wife not informed that the procedure would not take place? She and I have each lost a day's holiday.

Apart from being asked if her eyesight has worsened, my wife was not examined. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the NHS to write to a patient informing them that their appointment has been cancelled? Clearly in this case it was beyond the NHS's capacity.