Close to 22,000 operations were cancelled by 34 hospitals across the State last year, new figures indicate. Data released by the hospitals to The Irish Times show thousands of patients had their operations cancelled because the hospitals they were scheduled to be admitted to for elective surgery in 2005 had no vacant beds.
This was a major problem at the biggest hospital in the State, St James's in Dublin, which had to cancel 4,281 operations last year. The hospital said some 3,598 of these were cancelled because beds were not available.
The other reasons why operations were cancelled at the hospital in 2005 were varied. They included patients not attending in 337 cases, in 77 cases the patient was assessed as unfit, the consultant was unavailable in 49 cases and in 220 cases the consultant had to prioritise another patient.
Almost half the 2,264 operations cancelled at Tallaght Hospital, Dublin, last year were also put off as a result of beds being unavailable.
The issue of bed availability was not just a problem in Dublin hospitals. At Letterkenny General Hospital where 1,237 operations had to be cancelled, the hospital said all cancellations were as a result of "no beds". All 34 operations cancelled at Ennis General Hospital were also attributed to "bed shortages".
And about half the operations cancelled at Waterford Regional Hospital and at Wexford General Hospital were attributed to lack of bed availability.
When compared with figures for 2004, the data released indicates about 1,500 more operations had to be cancelled by hospitals last year than the year before. Only 112 of these additional cancellations are accounted for by the fact that two hospitals which could not provide data for 2004 - Mullingar and Cashel - released figures for 2005.
The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show a total of 21,983 operations were cancelled by 34 hospitals across the State last year compared to 20,428 cancelled by 32 hospitals in 2004.
However, not all hospitals in the State could provide figures for 2005 which means the true numbers of operations cancelled last year is likely to be even higher than the figures which have been released show. St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin and Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, for example could not provide figures.
Apart from bed shortages, other reasons given by hospitals for cancelling operations last year included patients not turning up, patients being medically unfit, lack of theatre time, patients being found to have had the operation already, consultants having to postpone the surgery, staffing shortages, technical difficulties, outbreaks of winter vomiting and consultants being away or ill.
At Tullamore General Hospital where 1,243 operations were cancelled, the hospital said some 829 of them were put off as a result of patients cancelling the surgery themselves or not attending. Another 282 were put off at this hospital because no beds were available and 132 were "cancelled by consultant".
Galway city's two main hospitals, University College Hospital and Merlin Park Regional Hospital, said however, that cases cancelled by patients or cases where patients did not keep their appointment were not included in its total figure of 3,334 operations cancelled last year. It added that cancelled procedures are relisted for the following day and this can result in the same procedure being deferred a number of times.
The Health Service Executive said last night it recognised that the deferral of operations can cause inconvenience for patients. It said it endeavours to keep them to a minimum and to have postponed operations rescheduled as soon as possible.
Furthermore it said the figure for total operations cancelled in 2005 represented less than 3.4 per cent of the total number of operations performed during the year.
Janette Byrne of Patients Together said the problems in the health service, whether it was patients having their operations cancelled or lying on trolleys in A&E, all seemed to come back to the need for extra hospital beds and the sooner the HSE and the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, realised this the better.