Hospital doctors fear new plans will be used to make cuts to NHS
THREE QUARTERS of hospital doctors have raised concerns that plans aimed at transforming the health service are being used to make cuts to the NHS, a new poll suggests.
A new poll of 450 hospital consultants found that 77 per cent believe that Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STP) are “a measure to introduce cuts to the NHS”.
Only one in 20 felt they had sufficient involvement in the process of their local STPs.
STPs are being developed in 44 regions in England in a bid to revolutionise services while saving money. The controversial plans have earmarked service and ward closures and hospital bed reductions.
But the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association said there was “overwhelming scepticism” among medical staff about the plans.
In a new report it stated that “transformation on this scale requires, and merits, several years to develop processes and undertake consultation”.
But health officials were ploughing ahead with the controversial plans “too fast”, the trade union said.
HCSA chief executive Eddie Saville said: “The process is too fast, too vague, underfunded and displaying the classic symptoms of policy failure.
“Despite this, there is still now an opportunity to turn things around.
“What we’re saying is let’s slow this process down, let’s pause for breath and really look at the resources required to avoid damaging service cuts.”
A LACK of funding could result in up to one in 10 people in England finding themselves on NHS waiting lists by 2021, the organisation’s head has warned, as he reissued his call for an urgent cash injection for the country’s health services,
Addressing a gathering of leading care providers, Simon Stevens argued that an increase in funding of between £20bn-£30bn a year is needed if ministers want the UK to keep up with standards in other European countries.
The notoriously outspoken chief executive also called on Brexiteer politicians to honour their referendum pledge to redirect £350m in EU contributions into the NHS.
Speaking at the NHS Providers conference in Birmingham, he suggested that a failure to honour this pledge could undermine the public’s faith in politics.
Mr Stevens’ intervention followed an address by the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in which he insisted the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are “very aware” of the financial pressures the NHS is under.
Mr Hunt told the conference: “My job is to make the argument hard inside Government that the NHS gets the resources it needs, but I also have to operate in a broader economic context.”
He went on to argue that there is “an awful lot” that the NHS could be doing to improve the quality of patient care, and it is a “mistake” to suggest the entire future of the NHS “hangs on a decision Philip Hammond makes in the Budget in two weeks’ time”.
“We know that when governments ignore the national financial context, you risk the terrible recession we had in 2008. So we have to get the balance right,” he said.
In his own speech yesterday, Mr Stevens acknowledged that it was “rightly” up to the Chancellor to decide the NHS budget, but added that the public “have a right to know what those choices would mean”.
He suggested he had a “duty of candour” to explain these consequences in order to “help inform the difficult choices that will be made in the years ahead”.
“It boils down to this: On the current budget, far from growing the number of nurses and other frontline staff, in many parts of the country next year, hospitals, community health services and GPs are more likely to be retrenching and retreating,” he said. “On the current funding outlook, it is going to be increasingly hard to expand mental health services or improve cancer care.
“Crucially, on the current funding outlook, the NHS waiting list will grow to five million people by 2021. That’s... one in 10 of us waiting for an operation.”
Comparing UK spending to other European countries, Mr Stevens told delegates that the Treasury would need to commit an extra £20-30bn a year to keep up with governments in Germany, France or Sweden.
And in a reference to the £350m slogan that featured on the Leave campaign bus in last year’s referendum, he said: “Rather than our criticising these clear Brexit funding commitments to NHS patients – promises entered into by Cabinet ministers and by MPs – the public want to see them honoured.”