Dozens of patients are having operations cancelled at the eleventh hour as Oxford's hospital crisis deepens.

And many are not being re-admitted within a month - breaching guidelines set out in the Patient's Charter.

Health trust bosses have cancelled non-emergency ops on the day they were due to take place because of the number of emergency patients.

In June, 98 operations were cancelled. The following month, 60 were axed, according to the latest figures.

The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, which covers the John Radcliffe and Churchill hospitals, admits operations are being cancelled. Hundreds are likely to be axed over the whole year.

Under the Patient's Charter, the trust has to re-admit patients within one month. It failed to do this in 27 cases in June and 18 in July.

A spokesman said: "The cancellations are improving now. There is a significant improvement. The main problem is we have a high emergency workload and the only option is to cancel non-urgent cases."

Figures also show the number of people on waiting lists rising again. One of the worst areas is gynaecology, where the trust is 200 patients behind a target of 800 on the waiting list. In paediatrics, the trust is 50 patients behind its target of 100. The problems in gynaecology are mainly caused by re-flooring work in the department, which has severely disrupted non-urgent cases.

Earlier this year, drastic steps were promised after the number of patients waiting for treatment leaped by 2,000 in Oxfordshire last year.

The list had grown by 20 per cent by March, from 11,251 in 1997 to 13,501.

Meanwhile, the casualty department at the John Radcliffe Hospital is also failing to meet Patient's Charter standards. Bed shortages have meant that only 71 per cent of patients are admitted within the two-hour target.

The Charter, first published in 1991, aims to improve the quality of health service delivery to patients. It sets out patients' rights and the standard of service they can expect for waiting lists, treatment and patient privacy.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.