Waiting list figures fixed in bid to hit NHS targets

More than 250 patients at a health service trust were left waiting longer than the maximum permitted time for treatment because of a waiting list scam designed to meet government targets, a report revealed yesterday.

The patients at South Manchester University Hospitals NHS trust "suffered pain, disability or distress for longer than would otherwise have been the case" because they were not declared as having exceeded the maximum waiting time, the report by Greater Manchester Strategic Health Authority said.

The South Manchester trust was one of three cited in a separate inquiry yesterday by the Audit Commission that revealed widespread misreporting of waiting list figures. It found more than half of NHS trusts had errors in their figures and three – including the South Manchester trust – had deliberately manipulated them.

The scale of the errors, affecting 22 of the 41 trusts selected for spot checks by the Audit Commission, raises questions about the trustworthiness of the national waiting list figures and the pressure on managers to meet them. Sir Nigel Crisp, chief executive of the NHS, said: "We take this matter extremely seriously."

He said deliberate fiddling of the figures was "reprehensible and inexcusable" but most of the errors exposed in the Audit Commission survey, which covered the year 2001-02, were "unlikely to have affected the care of individual patients". James Strachan, chairman of the commission, qualified this claim yesterday when he said some patients might have waited "a couple of months longer than they should".

In South Manchester, which conducted its own review after being alerted to the problem by the Audit Commission, investigators found there had been systematic fiddling of the figures since 1996. It concluded that over a five-year period, 261 patients who had waited longer than the 18-month government maximum had not been declared. If their cases had been properly recorded they would have been offered earlier treatment elsewhere to bring them within the permitted maximum treatment time.

The South Manchester report pins responsibility for the scam on the former chief executive Jane Herbert and her former deputy Chris Povah. Ms Herbert resigned last week from her new post as chief executive of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Strategic Health Authority; Mr Povah has been suspended from his post as chief executive of East Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust. Andrew Whitely, the finance director who resigned last year, was also described as peripherally involved, as was an unnamed more junior staff member.

Two other trusts were named by the Audit Commission as having deliberately fiddled their figures. Scarborough and North East Yorkshire suspended three directors – Liz Parker, Martin Hay and Jim Brace – before Christmas and set up an inquiry.

East and North Hertfordshire Trust suspended Simon Meddick, director of planning, in November and an external review is under way.

NHS trusts have been under intense pressure to meet waiting list targets, which are due to be reduced to a maximum of six months by 2005.

Sir Nigel said that all trusts identified as having problems by the Audit Commission would report back by the end of this month, and all trusts nationally would review their systems for recording waiting times by the end of June.