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Hospitals need to cancel their operations and cancer scanners have not been read for weeks as consulting doctors suddenly began working to address the NHS pension issue.
Doctors say the conflict is escalating so quickly that it will send NHS services "to disaster" and is so severe that it constitutes "an existential threat" to the survival of the health service .
The changes to the pension rules in 2016 mean that a growing number of consultants are receiving large bills related to the value of their pension. Some have to remortgage their homes to pay.
Wait times for treatments, which are already the worst of all times, are worsening as hospitals struggle to find experienced doctors willing to work more than expected, which could lead them to collect a pension tax bill of up to £ 80,000.
NHS officials fear that the total number of patients in England waiting for non-urgent care, such as a hip replacement or hernia repair, which already stands at 4.4 million, is reaching soon 5 million.
Royal Bournemouth Hospital in Dorset may be forced to cancel many operations by July 27, as none of its anesthesia consultants are willing to badist 53 surgeries, involving up to 150 surgeries , which have not been discovered at present, because none of these patients have been discovered. The specialty is registered to attend.
The situation has arisen because his anesthetists fear that by working beyond their usual hours, their financial situation will deteriorate.
In another hospital, the number of patients waiting more than the badumed maximum of 18 weeks for a planned operation has increased from 3,000 to 4,500 since April for the same reason.
"The pension catastrophe is an existential threat to our NHS. We are just beginning to see the impact of these taxes. The number of affected physicians will increase dramatically, "said Dr. Tony Goldstone, consulting radiologist and clinical director of University Hull Hospitals, NHS Trust, also a retirement expert.
"As clinician and front-line clinical director, the hard reality of pension taxation is becoming clearer. Not only in my own confidence, but across the country, there are reports of backlogs of unreported cancer tests – higher than they have been for years.
"Colleagues who used to help support services by working extra weekends, in addition to their already heavy work rotations, can no longer afford to do so. I am told that the operating rooms are not being used because of the inability to staff them and that the vacant positions are not being filled, as the top managers can not help.
The consultants' decisions also mean that hospitals are also struggling to find enough doctors to ensure full staff turnover in their emergency or medical unit. The resulting gaps in internships pose a potential threat to the quality and safety of care, according to NHS leaders.
Full-time physicians are usually hired to undertake 10 "scheduled activities" – four- or five-hour shifts – a week, but most consultants do eleven or twelve. This extra work helps the NHS cope with the growing demand to care. However, more and more consultants are giving up sessions because, by earning less, their retirement pot increases more slowly and their risk of being hit by a big bill is reduced.
Chris Hopson, managing director of NHS Providers, which represents the NHS trusts in England, said hospital managers were finding it increasingly difficult to provide a normal range of services, especially surgical catch-up sessions. to handle the backlogs of waiting lists.
Last month, there was a sharp increase in the number of consultants who withdrew from overtime, saying that the solution proposed by the government – contained in the NHS People Draft Plan for England, released on June 3 – would not work.
The so-called 50/50 plan would leave doctors younger than 10 years old in their pensions to reduce the risk of their pot reaching the maximum of £ 1.1 million.
Hopson said, "The staff votes with his feet. Confidence leaders indicated that over the past month, a significant number of clinical and management staff members have stated that they can no longer afford to work shifts and weekends. because of the financial penalties incurred, because of the way pension rules currently work.
"To quote two examples we heard this week, an experienced anesthesiologist who worked 27 Saturdays last year to reduce waiting lists now said he could not afford to do extra shifts on Saturday this year because it would give him a large tax bill. can not afford to pay.
"The medical director of another fiduciary firm, a senior consultant in medicine and engineering, who worked regularly on most Sundays last year and who played a key role in providing safe emergency care for this trust, is now unable to work on a Sunday for similar reasons. In both cases, the performance of the trust [on waiting times] and the quality of patient care is likely to be compromised. "
A dispute over hours of work, again caused by huge tax burdens on pensions, is being prepared in the hospitals of University College London, one of the largest and best trusts in the NHS, which also had to cancel additional scheduled sessions of surgery.
In a letter to his consultants last week, Ben Morrin, director of the trust's staff, explained to them that, despite their growing reluctance to work beyond their usual hours, "we are still waiting for consultants, including academics. , academics and clinicians. a maximum of one additional scheduled activity per week, in addition to the standard commitment set out in his / her employment contract, before engaging in a private activity with the trust ". The consultants plan to react "energetically".
A consultant from a trusted group said that unless the ministers act, about 30% of the total time of the consultants might no longer be available for the NHS, if enough time was cut . "It also has an effect on emergency care and rotations outside office hours, especially when there are rotations, where there is now a tax penalty to fill those gaps with consultants." internal. This is a real risk to provide safe care. A consultant told me that just yesterday, they had an unexpected bill of £ 75,000. "
Professor Joe Harrison, Executive Director of the Milton Keynes University Hospital Trust, said, "Although this has not yet affected us in terms of reducing the number of hours of consulting, it may well begin to change in the near future. the approach of the end of the fiscal year. If this happened – which is right at the beginning of the winter – the impact on our ability to provide safe care, both for patients requiring planned operations and procedures and for those requiring care of urgency, would be seriously compromised. "
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