WAITING times for operations on the National Health Service have been cut, staff numbers are up and deaths from cancer and heart disease are down, according to an NHS report.

The figures, to be released today in a report by Sir Nigel Crisp, the NHS chief executive, will delight ministers, who have waited anxiously for signs that the massive investment in the NHS is paying off.

Operation numbers are up and there has been a huge increase in outpatient procedures, freeing beds to help to clear the waiting lists.Staff numbers are up, with 38,000 new nurses and 9,500 new doctors employed in the past three years.

Sir Nigel is confident that the targets set in the NHS Plan can be met, including the undertakings that by 2005 nobody will wait longer than 13 weeks for an outpatient appointment, or six months for an operation.

The most impressive figures in his report cover the fall in patients waiting more than six months for an operation. When the NHS Plan was launched three years ago that stood at 264,370. In the next two years it fell by only 5.9 per cent to 248,690 in September 2002. In the past year that fell by 28.5 per cent, to 177,867.

“We’ll hit the targets,” Sir Nigel said yesterday. “There’s still a long way to go, but people have done very well. We are seeing accelerating change in the NHS.”

For the first time since Labour came to office, waiting lists for operations have also begun to show substantial improvements.

The waiting lists stood at 1.1 million in 1997. By the time the NHS Plan went into operation that had been reduced to 1.037 million. By September last year the figures had crept up, to 1.048 million. In the past year they have fallen by 7.1 per cent, to 974,000.

The secret to the rapidly improving figures appears to be a trend to do many more procedures such as chemotherapy, diagnostic tests, treatments for piles and vasectomies as outpatient appointments, freeing up beds. The number of such outpatient procedures increased by 14.9 per cent between April and September. Trends in death rates for both cancer and heart disease are on course to “easily achieve” the target of a 20 per cent reduction by 2010.

Sir Nigel’s report shows that the vast majority of those treated are happy or very happy with that treatment. Today’s report is, therefore, likely to be greeted with relief. However, it was not all good news, with another report saying the Government’s demands for information, form-filling and target-setting are stopping staff doing their jobs.

The report, published by the Centre for Policy Studies, calls for NHS managers to have more freedom over the day-to-day management of hospitals and less bureaucracy.

Harriet Sergeant, author of Managing Not To Manage, carried out detailed interviews with staff across the NHS. She described an “obsessive desire for information” from the Department of Health.

One A&E manager said that her difficulties were not caused by violence, number of patients or problems with staff but by “the bureaucracy and the endless meetings”.

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