Hospitals swamped by 1.5million needless emergency admissions every year as critical operations are stopped

HOSPITALS are being swamped by 1.5million needless emergency admissions each year.

MPs claim avoidable stays are causing bed shortages and forcing thousands of critical NHS operations to be cancelled.

Hospitals carried out 23,000 fewer procedures last January than a year earlier.

A damning report by the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee blamed “lamentable” NHS failings for one in four emergency admissions wrongly clogging up wards.

Chairman Meg Hillier blasted the Government’s “failure to fund and co-ordinate preventive health care and social care”.

Charity Independent Age said: “If services were properly funded, older people would be more likely to recover quicker from illness and avoid emergency admissions.”

An NHS spokesman said: “We know the social care system is under pressure.

"That’s why we’ve given an extra £2billion funding.”

• A NATIONAL Audit Office report found the price of some NHS drugs has rocketed 70 times in a year.

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