TWO doctors at a leading NHS hospital have become the first consultant surgeons to be made redundant as a result of the financial crisis in the health service.

Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, which has a £33m deficit, has given two consultant gastrointestinal surgeons, one full-time and one part-time, three months’ notice.

One of the surgeons, Simon Cole, is a former president of the Association of Surgeons in Training, while the name of the other has not been disclosed.

Jonathan Fielden, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) consultants’ committee, said: “This is a deplorable step that shows the state of the financial crisis that many trusts are in. This will have a significant impact on patient care.”

A trust spokeswoman confirmed the trust had to save £33m this year, adding: “A review indicates, among other things, a reduced number of gastrointestinal procedures. We are, therefore, matching our capacity to the reduced use of this service.”

The move comes as Debbie Abrahams, chairwoman of Rochdale NHS Trust, disclosed this weekend that she was resigning her post because of her anger at the use of private health companies in the NHS.

At this week’s BMA annual conference its chairman James Johnson is expected to say the government’s NHS reforms have delivered poor value for money. He said that despite massive funding increases there has not been a dramatic improvement in patient care. “The NHS has got better, but not commensurately better, for the very large amounts of money spent,” he said.

Two official reports this week — one from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and one from the government’s NHS inspectorate — are expected to show patients are still receiving substandard care.

The OECD report will show that, in some areas, the NHS is lagging behind health services in 30 other European countries. It is expected to disclose: o Death rates from breast cancer in Britain are higher than in most other European countries. o Britain has fewer radiotherapy machines for treating cancer than most other European states and only a fraction of the numbers in France, Switzerland and Denmark. o The NHS has fewer doctors than European neighbours and almost half the ratio of doctors to patients as Greece and Italy.

The NHS inspectorate’s report is expected to say that services for chronic lung disease, which affects 3m patients in Britain, have been badly neglected. The Healthcare Commission will say that NHS treatment for conditions such as emphysema and bronchitis needs to be improved urgently. Chronic lung disease kills more than 30,000 every year, almost double the European average.

The commission will add that patients suffering from respiratory disease have been given the wrong diagnosis or have not been diagnosed at all, leading to them being denied care.

It will say the equipment available in the NHS to diagnose chronic lung disease is ineffective and that doctors and nurses do not know enough to operate the machines and interpret the results. Patients who are diagnosed with lung disease do not receive adequate health checks resulting in them losing out on necessary treatment.

Patient care could be further damaged by the government’s radical reforms, Johnson will tell the BMA conference. He says the government’s policy of allowing patients to choose to be treated at private hospitals could undermine the NHS. He will warn that district general hospitals running casualty departments, intensive care units and maternity wards could close as treatment is siphoned off to privately run treatment centres.

The Department of Health said patient care had improved dramatically, with record funding resulting in more doctors and nurses, wider access to medicines and the shortest-ever waiting times.

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