BIRMINGHAM’S needy medical patients are being unfairly denied routine operations while those in well-to-do parts of the country are undergoing unnecessary surgery, a report suggested.

The study by The King’s Fund found “persistent and widespread variations” across England in patients’ chances of undergoing surgery for common procedures such as cataract or hip replacements.

It said patients in deprived areas appeared to miss out disproportionately on some effective treatments.

And it said almost double the number of hip replacement operations were carried out on patients in leafy Surrey than on those from inner city Birmingham covered by the Heart of Birmingham Primary Care Trust.

John Appleby, chief economist at The King’s Fund, described the variations as “unfair to patients and inefficient for the NHS”.

He said: “Remedying this is urgent, given the need to improve quality of care while the NHS grapples with its biggest financial crisis.

“Often the ‘postcode lottery’ phrase has been used for things like rare cancers and treatments which affect very few people. People seem to miss a much bigger issue. Cataract operations are the most common operations in the NHS, approaching 300,000 operations a year, and yet we have got big variations from PCT to PCT, which we find difficult to explain.”

The charity found the differences remained even after variation in need was taken into account.

Its report said: “This suggests many patients are not being given surgery they need and that some may be undergoing operations they do not benefit from.”

The report called for a programme of work to identify the causes of variation at specific local level.