Northampton General sends cancer patients to private Three Shires Hospital during pandemic

Northampton General Hospital has been outsourcing its cancer treatment and surgeries to nearby Three Shires Hospital during the Covid-19 outbreak.

The private BMI hospital on The Avenue, Cliftonville, has been used by NGH to treat cancer patients since early-April.

It comes as part of a coronavirus response plan published in May and is a bid to reduce the number of patients at NGH while shielding them from Covid-19-positive patients.

It comes as papers have revealed how Northampton General has been faced with hundreds of patients "refusing" to go to hospital in April and May under the lockdown.

As of May 28, the hospital has more than 170 patients who have not been seen within the 62-day target - and many of them have not even been officially diagnosed.

Meanwhile, the hospital expects a large number of its cancer patients will be "off-target" for their treatments when figures are published for April and May because many patients' appointments, visits and treatments will have been "paused" because of the outbreak.

Board papers from the hospital say patients will still receive follow up care from NGH after they are discharged from care at Three Shires.

Three Shires is a private hospital operated by BMI Healthcare and was rated as "good" by the healthcare watchdog in its last inspection in 2018.

Board papers for the hospital says that resuming cancer treatments such as radiology and the "two-week-wait" referral system at the hospital again was a priority,