A patients' group has called for a public inquiry after revelations that hospital waiting list figures were rigged.

The Patients Association said the practice was "playing with people's health and lives" and should not be allowed to happen again.

Yesterday Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust admitted up to 1,500 patients had been taken off official lists during the last quarter of 1998/99.

The trust is responsible for Crawley Hospital and East Surrey Hospital in Redhill. It also provides services at Horsham Hospital.

The hospitals merged in 1998 to form the new trust.

Chief executive Ken Cunningham discovered the cover-up when he was appointed in August last year.

An independent report commissioned by the South-East regional office of the NHS found patients were being inappropriately removed from the official waiting list in order not to be counted in the trust's final figures.

Similarly, patients who should have been reported as having waited more than 18 months for their operation were not being reported.

The report said the trust had now introduced strict controls and measures to make sure the massaging of figures could not happen again.

It also found while the patients were not reported on the official waiting-list figures, evidence suggested they remained on an unofficial waiting list.

Yesterday's revelations sparked anger.

Local health organisations also raised concerns about the increasing pressures faced by trusts to meet Government waiting-list targets.

Katherine Murphy, director of communications for the Patients Association, has called for a public inquiry.

She said: "It appears the NHS won't be taking this further, which we are not happy about. It's lives we are playing around with here.

"It is ridiculous that this type of thing happens and it is all because trusts are desperate to meet Government standards. In the long run it is the patients who suffer.

"Mr Cunningham should be commended for making this public. We believe more hospital chief executives should do the same.

"We have heard of other trusts in the country which have been involved with similar waiting-list figure manipulation but this is the first one we know of which has come forward and openly admitted what was going on."

NHS South-East regional office spokesman Paul Bryden said: "We viewed with great concern the problems relating to waiting-list management at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust and commissioned this independent inquiry into what went wrong there.

"We are satisfied the current management has set up new and rigorous systems to ensure similar problems will not happen again."

Mr Bryden said as far as the report was concerned, ultimate responsibility for what happened rested with the former chief executive, Isobel Gowan.

He said he could not speculate on whether other individuals had been involved.

He said: "As far as we are concerned the matter has been investigated and the correct steps have been taken to make sure it will not happen again.

"This has been an unusual, one-off situation."

Roger Townsend of West Sussex Health Authority said: "The authority is dependent on information provided by trusts and monitors them as closely as it can, so it is regrettable when something like this becomes apparent.

"As soon as the trust discovered the discrepancies it took immediate steps to find out how this happened."

West Sussex has one of the worst waiting list records in England. A recent study by the National Audit Office showed 37 per cent of patients were waiting six months or more for treatment.

Like other health authorities and trusts in England, it is struggling to cope with increased demand from patients and difficulties recruiting staff.

Chris Bird, spokesman for the Crawley Hospital Campaign, asked what they could believe from the trust about justifying moving services to Redhill.

He said: "As long as there are pressures to perform within inadequate targets, it is inevitable people will falsify figures to meet those targets."

The campaign was formed after the trust announced plans to transfer maternity and some A&E services from Crawley to Redhill.

Bryan Jones, chairman of Mid Downs Community Health Council, said: "With some of the problems now identified from the merging of the two trusts, it is hoped that the measures to be implemented will be sufficient to achieve waiting-list target requirements."

The independent report found the patients had been left on an unofficial waiting list and were reinstated on the official list shortly afterwards.

Trust chairman Vivien Hepworth said: "I would like to offer a sincere apology to patients of this trust, to local health professionals and to the wider local community."

She said the report made it clear Mrs Gowan, who left by mutual agreement in April 2000, should take responsibility for what was described as "mismanagement and false reporting" of waiting lists.

Mrs Hepworth said the board had been unaware figures had been manipulated when Mrs Gowan left.

The trust list rose dramatically within the first six months of 1999/2000 as patients held back from the waiting list the previous year were reinstated.

Mr Cunningham said within days of taking over, he realised there was an unusually high number of patients who had been suspended from waiting lists.

The trust was reporting a large number of people waiting more than 17 months for treatment but nobody waiting longer than 18 months.

He said: "I am confident our waiting list totals today are absolutely accurate.

"In September last year 10,000 people were waiting for operations. Today that number has dropped to about 8,300. We are on target to meet the Government's pledge of a maximum wait of 15 months by March 2002."