Facing an uncertain fate

A leading teaching hospital with 60 specialities and research centre. It handles 450,000 cases a year.

The trust can treat patients within three months but has been told to slow down because there is not enough money. It has been forced to close 100 beds because of a reduction in patient numbers.

Chief executive Derek Smith said: "We could treat thousands more patients at Hammersmith if the money was there to pay for it."

Ravenscourt Park Hospital

An orthopaedic specialist centre that carries out operations such as hip and knee replacements.

It is doing only 400 operations a month when it could do 800. Local patients cannot get in for treatment because their primary care trusts have run out of money. Mr Smith, who also manages Ravenscourt

Park hospital, said: "The logic of this policy defies belief."

Ambulatory Care and Diagnostic Centre (ACAD) at North West London Hospitals NHS Trust

The first NHS flagship centre designed to work long hours and at weekends to carry out elective treatments, it is separate from A&E departments - so emergency cases do not mean last-minute cancellations of operations.

But since April it has done only 6,439 procedures instead of the 23,000 planned.

ACAD general manager Nicky Bloom said the private treatment centres, which were designed to bring in competition, give patients choice and force the NHS to become more efficient were at an unfair advantage because they were guaranteed a certain number of patients.