Almost 150 surgeries a month cancelled in Dumfries and Galloway
1785 NHS hospital operations were cancelled last year
A total of 1,785 hospital operations were cancelled by NHS Dumfries and Galloway last year, it has been revealed.
This equates to nearly 150 elective (planned) surgeries per month – or close to five per day.
The vast majority of locally scheduled operations for patients in this region take place at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, however a few hundred are also carried out at Galloway Community Hospital in Stranraer and Mountainhall Treatment Centre in Dumfries.
Of the 1,785 that were cancelled in 2024/25, 1,681 were called off on the same day that surgery was due to take place.
A freedom of information (FOI) request to NHS Dumfries and Galloway showed that no ward bed was available for 58 cancelled operations, which was a significant increase on 35 from the previous year.
Meanwhile, 11 scheduled operations were scrubbed due to the ward being completely closed. This was a sharp increase on just four occasions for this reason the year before.
However, the most common reason for surgeons taking the gloves off was patients simply not showing up. There were 512 cases last year where patients did not attend – a rise of 60 from 2023/24.
A spokesman for NHS Dumfries and Galloway said: “While the total number of cancelled procedures has increased slightly from 1720 in 2023/24 to 1785 in 2024/25, this represents a relatively small year-on-year rise when set against the overall volume of elective activity delivered by the health board.
“The majority of planned operations continue to go ahead as scheduled.
“It is also important to note that a significant proportion of cancellations are due to factors which cannot be mitigated.
“The category ‘P-DNA’ refers to patients who did not attend for their scheduled procedure. In 2024/25 this accounted for 512 cancellations.
“Non-attendance can occur for a range of reasons, including acute illness on the day, personal circumstances, or patients choosing to defer treatment, often at short notice.
“Other cancellations may be linked to clinical safety considerations, such as a patient being unwell on admission or requiring further pre-operative assessment. In these cases, postponement is in the patient’s best interests.”
He added: “We recognise that cancellations due to no available beds or ward closures are particularly inconvenient for patients. These arise from hospital capacity pressures, emergency admissions, or safety-related ward closures.
“The health board continues to take steps to minimise cancellations and prioritise patient safety, while acknowledging and apologising for the disruption these unavoidable situations can cause.”
NHS Dumfries and Galloway provided a breakdown on where these cancelled operations were expected to go ahead: Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary – 1,457; Galloway Community Hospital – 228; and Mountainhall Treatment Centre – 100.
A recent study highlighted how postponing operations is costing the NHS millions and increasing hospital waiting lists.
As well as the economic cost, cancelled procedures come at a “great cost” to patients, researchers from the University of Bristol said.
Their study examined knee surgery cancellations across six NHS hospitals – in Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland – over five years between April 2018 and March 2023.
During this period 17,223 total knee replacement operations were completed and 9,403 were cancelled.
A quarter (25 percent) of the cancellations were less than 24 hours before surgery, and 60 percent were within two to 14 days, researchers wrote in The Bone & Joint Journal.
The research team, led by academics at the National Institute for Health and Care Research Bristol Biomedical Research Centre, pointed out that each operation cancelled at short notice costs the NHS a “lost tariff” of between £6,500 and £11,000.