THERE comes a point when a situation gets so bad you just have to kick in and take emergency action.

It would seem Oxford University Hospitals Trust has reached that point as it chucks out any promise it will try to hit the Government’s targets on starting treatment within 18 weeks.

It is blaming an increase in outpatients and is now going to concentrate on trying to clear the backlog to try to get back on track.

In the cold dead world of the beancounter this is a sensible and acceptable option.

But as Oxford East MP Andrew Smith so correctly points out, each one of these statistics represents a real person who is ill.

Our hospitals may be facing a demand on treatment but the people running them are charged with delivering services and are paid handsomely by the taxpayer to do so.

To have to shelve the waiting times is a failure to deliver services.

Yesterday the hospital rather conveniently overlooked questions asking for the actual number of people affected.

It has also not really explained how this current situation has come to pass.

That is concerning because ditching target times is an extraordinary move that needs explaining openly and transparently to the sick people affected.

The OUHT needs to know it needs to solve this problem as soon as possible and it cannot have a repeat.