BMJ  2003;327:179 (26 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7408.179

News

NHS staff cheat to hit government targets, MPs say

London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

NHS staff are cheating to hit the government's targets, a report by an influential committee of MPs has said.

A report by the public administration select committee, On Target? Government by Measurement, has revealed allegations of cheating, perverse consequences, and distortions in pursuit of targets.

Accident and emergency (A&E) departments were "prone to creative accounting," the report said. The BMA, the Royal College of Nursing, and the Patients Association told the committee how "targets for A&E maximum waiting times were being circumvented by imaginative fixes where trolleys either had their wheels removed or were re-designated as 'beds on wheels' and corridors and treatment rooms are redesignated as 'pre-admission units.'"

The committee also heard how 25 patients went blind because of the drive to meet new outpatients appointments. Richard Harrad, clinical director of Bristol Eye Hospital, told the committee how this target had been met at the expense of cancellation . . . [Full text of this article]

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