Like all hospitals, we are seeing increased demand for our services at present, due to Covid-19 combined with a higher number of patients accessing urgent and emergency care.

To ensure we can continue to provide safe and effective care for those patients that need it, we have taken the proactive decision to:

  • Pause all routine planned operations from now until the end of January. Urgent and emergency operations and procedures (including for cancer) will continue to go ahead as normal.
  • Pause all routine outpatient and follow-up appointments until the end of January. This also applies to virtual outpatient appointments.

Urgent outpatient appointments and diagnostics (including MRI, CT, ultrasound, echocardiography and endoscopy) will go ahead as normal.

Our teams will be contacting those patients affected by today’s announcement in due course – and we would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused. We will rebook patients whose appointments have been cancelled as soon as possible.

We will review the situation on a weekly basis, and re-start planned care as soon we are in a position to do so.

Our senior clinical leadership team has taken this decision to free up staff to support our emergency, inpatient and intensive care teams, who are caring for a high number of patients at present, including those with Covid-19.

Dr Richard Jennings, Chief Medical Officer at St George’s, said:

‘’Our teams are very busy at present, and we need to ensure we are in a position to provide safe and effective care for those patients most in need.

‘’We have robust plans in place to ensure we can continue to meet demand – and today’s decision is a key part of staying ahead, and taking proactive decisions that are in the best interests of all our patients, given the current challenges presented by Covid-19’’.

Additional information: 

Important: if you are NOT contacted and have an operation, scan or outpatient appointment scheduled between now (23 December) and the end of January, please attend hospital as planned.

If you have any concerns about your health, or your condition has deteriorated, please contact your hospital service or GP.

If you, or someone you know, is experiencing a serious or life threatening emergency (for example symptoms of a heart attack or stroke) you must dial 999 immediately.

If you require urgent care, please call NHS 111 first.