MORE than 800 patients turned up at hospital last year to discover their operations had been cancelled at the last minute.

Elective surgery figures for 2015 show 576 people were sent home from Southend Hospital, while Basildon Hospital turned away 267 patients on the day they were due to be operated on.

Both hospitals cite a lack of surgeons and theatre time.

Bosses at Southend told the Echo equipment failure and a lack of beds were also main reasons for the high number of cancellations.

The hospitals are at the heart of the NHS England Mid and South Essex Success Regime, which wants to put an end to the duplication of services and ongoing battles to fill doctor and nursing vacancies.

The regime - which also includes Broomfield Hospital, in Chelmsford - is currently looking at creating a major trauma centre, downgrading the remaining two A&E departments to deal with less serious cases.

The high number of last-minute cancellations has concerned Southend Healthwatch.

Leanne Crabb, senior officer said: “We know how frustrating it is for patients, especially if they have carers to get them to the hospital.

“Concerns over staffing will be part of a big review by the success regime so we’ll see what they come up with as a high priority. The junior doctors’ strike affected some operations and there are staffing shortages but we want to see this figure come down.”

Southend Hospital has been plagued by black and critical incident alerts, meaning it has been unable to admit patients because of a lack of beds.

Earlier this month the hospital was ordered to improve after concerns were raised about dangerous staffing levels following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission in.

During the inspection, which took place in January, the trust was on a high state of escalation due to an increased number of patients.

The commission said this caused high numbers of elective surgery and outpatient clinic cancellations, while a lack of staff “compromised patient safety.”

Jon Findlay, chief operating officer at Southend Hospital said: “We regret any cancellations and recognise the impact this has on patients and their family. They are only cancelled when it is absolutely necessary.

“In order to have capacity to admit and treat very ill patients arriving at the emergency department, it has unfortunately been necessary to cancel some non-emergency surgery.

“Sometimes patients do cancel at short notice. Trust staff work very hard to fill many of these slots with other patients. We always ask those booked for operations to give us as much notice if they do have to cancel.”