New plans will not revive NHS

A BMA investigation into the cost of funding Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) paints a very worrying picture with at least £9.5 billion needed in capital funding across the country to successfully deliver the plans.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough was one of the STP footprints requiring the most funding, telling NHS England that they would need £800 million in capital funding in order to deliver their ‘transformation’ plans.

This is in addition to millions of pounds needed to address other deficits and with NHS budgets being severely strained, funding from capital budgets are often used to prop up day to day running costs in the NHS.

The reality of what is needed to implement “transformation” plans is unachievable if the government does not provide the long-term investment that’s desperately needed.

The NHS and social care system is at breaking point and the STP process could have offered a chance to deal with some of the problems facing the NHS.

From its inception this process has occurred behind closed doors, without proper involvement from those on the front line.

The plans are fast becoming completely unworkable and have instead revealed a health service that is unsustainable without urgent further investment, and with little capacity to ‘transform’ in any meaningful way other than by reducing the provision of services on a drastic scale. Dr Ian Hume BMA Eastern Regional chair