NHS crisis appears to be deepening as more hospitals announce job cuts

NHS crisis appears to be deepening as more hospitals announce job cuts

	Published : Sun, 26 Mar 2006 07:35 By : James Rowe Print this Story

LONDON: The crisis confronting Britain's health scheme, the NHS seems to be worsening with more hospitals announcing staff cuts and curtailment of services. It is feared that nearly 20,000 may lose jobs in the final run.

The latest to join the list of hospitals that are planning to implement stringent cost cuts are two trusts in the North East and Kent, which warned staff cuts involving hundreds of staff are unavoidable.

At least 3,000 jobs have been lost ever since the NHS started implementing its restructuring programme and two-thirds of these cuts had happened in the past one week.

County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust announced Friday it expects up to 700 jobs would go in the next three years. The announcement came after East Kent Hospitals Trust, one of the largest hospital trusts in the country, said it is planning jobs cuts in order to reduce a 35-million-pound deficit.

Earlier on Wednesday, two well-run hospitals, the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, North London, and Queen Mary’s, Sidcup, Southeast London, had announced their intention to shed staff in order to plug deficits.

The opposition Conservatives have come out saying the government cannot ignore the issue any more as it has been doing in the past. Tories health spokesperson Andrew Lansley said government cannot be allowed to hide from the deficits, now running at about £750 million. He predicted the total job loss will be in the range of 20,000.

He charged that the government has mismanaged the service and much of the money it has pumped in has been wasted by bureaucracy or "the mismatch of supply and demand”. He said lay-off of doctors, nurses and midwives cannot be justified.

Chancellor Gordon Brown had explained that though his budget speech on Wednesday last did not give details of the funding for the NHS, extra money for the NHS had already been announced. He said health trust would receive an extra 6 billion pounds in the next financial year and a further £6 billion the year after that.

The Chancellor claimed that only a “small number” of trusts were affected by the so-called deficits.

Clarifying on the job cuts, hospital chiefs at County Durham and Darlington said job cuts were not essentially about saving money. Some of the changes in the NHS operations nationally, like outsourcing the work to private sector, have necessitated the job cuts.

Health secretary Patricia Hewitt denied there are serious problems at the national level. She said most of the hospitals are now improving patients’ care and meeting targets and they are doing it within their budgets.

Meanwhile, a health department spokesperson said any figures suggesting cuts are pure speculation as "decisions have yet to be made about the levels of MPET funding for 2006-07".