Latest News
Patients Hit as NHS Cash Crisis Forces Big Cutbacks
Reported in the Guardian Newspaper on Friday 5th March 2010
More than a third of NHS primary healthcare trusts, which fund hospitals in England, are running deficits that have led to a cutback in surgical operations and seen calls to close casualty departments, according to a joint study by the Guardian and the thinktank Civitas.
Figures from the public board meetings of 100 trusts, shows the health service overspend this year is more than £130million. The Department of Health has warned trusts they cannot enter the new financial year in the red and health authorities who do not cut costs face repaying cash from next year’s budget or being subjected to central control.
GP’s in Hertfordshire are being told to get “approval” for a list of procedures including hysterectomies, removal of “skin lumps and bumps” and tooth extraction. Managers have advised the family doctors that in many cases “it is usually better to wait to see if symptoms resolve themselves”.
Health economists say England’s big cities will bear the brunt of the cutbacks. John Appleby, chief economist of health thinktank the King’s Fund, said “In London there is a plan to close a third of hospital beds that is being floated by the NHS. It’s not out in the open yet and already it’s attracted huge opposition.
NHS Trusts Give Wrong Hospital Peformance Data to Public
Reported in the Telegraph Newspaper on Monday 8th March 2010
The majority of NHS Hospitals have been incorrectly assessing their own performance, leaving them open to accusations of misleading the public about levels of patient safety.
The Care Quality Commission, which is in charge of inspecting hospital trusts, found that 17 of the 28 it inspected last year had assessed themselves wrongly. The figures come as mounting evidence suggests some hospitals are drawing up plans to cut more than 10 per cent from their budget in an effort to save the NHS as much of £20billion over the next three years.
Labour Hid Ugly Truth About NHS
Reported in the Sunday Times on Sunday 7th March 2010
The Sunday Times reported that damning reports on the state of the National Health Service suppressed by the government reveal how patients’ needs have been neglected. They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as the root cause of a string of hospital scandals that have cost thousands of lives. One report, based on the advice of almost 200 top managers and doctors, says hospitals ignored basic hygiene to cram in patients to meet waiting-time targets. “Managers crowded in patients in order to meet waiting-time targets and, in the process, lost sight of the fundamental hygiene requirements for infection prevention” the report said.