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Dixon case highlights impact of Labour's target obsession

March 3, 2005 2:51 PM

Commenting on the case of Margaret Dixon, Paul Burstow MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, said:

"It can never be right to trade a person's medical records across the dispatch box to score a party political point. But the figures speak for themselves.

"Under Labour, the number of hospital beds has been cut, and the number of cancelled operations has increased. The Government's obsession with targets forces hospitals to play a game of bed spotting, desperately seeking an empty bed to hit the targets.

"The losers in this game are patients who at short notice find their operation cancelled, or who pick up an infection because of the rush to use the bed again."

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