A leading teaching hospital had to shut an intensive care unit for 18 weeks because of a doctor shortage caused by medics working fewer shifts to avoid the NHS pensions “tax trap”.

Guy’s and St Thomas’s trust in London closed one of its intensive care units over the summer after some of its consultants reduced their hours to avoid hefty tax bills linked to pensions.

The closure is part of a dossier that the group representing Britain’s 220,000 doctors has sent to ministers to show how seriously the pensions problem is disrupting care.

In Nottingham, consultant radiologists at the city’s NHS trust have halved from 1,200 to 600 the number of CT and MRI scans they read at home every month to help stop a backlog building up. This has forced Nottingham University Hospitals trust to outsource the work, which is costing them more money.

Many other hospitals have also been forced to cut the number of operations they perform and outpatient clinics offered. Doctors are reducing the number of “programmed activities”, or four-hour sessions, they undertake to avoid being hit with bills for tens of thousands of pounds due to rises in the value of their pension linked to the amount of extra hours they take on. Read more

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