Cash-strapped NHS faces winter crisis (warns £200k boss)
FLU outbreaks this winter could destabilise hospitals already running at the limits of their capacity, a leading health service boss has claimed.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said the service is so overstretched that the smallest shock could have repercussions for struggling organisations.
Mr Hopson, who is paid £200,000 a year, said the NHS is ‘facing the biggest challenge in a generation’ and was ‘much less resilient’ due to a lack of funds. His lobbying organisation represents NHS hospital, mental health and ambulance trusts, which pay £3.1million a year in subscription fees.
In a speech at its annual conference today, Mr Hopson will say: ‘When you run a system under as much pressure for as long as we have been running the NHS, it becomes much less able to absorb the shocks that any health system has to absorb; the winter flu outbreak, the closure of a couple of local care homes, a few experienced GPs retiring and being replaced by more risk-averse locums or new partners leading to sharply higher referral rates.
‘Given the capacity levels at which we are now permanently running our services these small shocks now risk destabilising local health services.’ A poll of NHS trusts found that only 27 per cent were confident they had sufficient staff to deliver high quality health care for patients.
But John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘It seems that taxpayers are now paying these fat cats a huge amount only to lobby the Government for yet more money. Hard-pressed families expect their taxes to pay for life-saving drugs and MRI machines, not on lining the pockets of pen-pushers.’
An NHS England spokesman said it was working with health organisations to prepare for any winter bugs and illnesses.