Health check

THE health service is probably our best-loved and most cherished institution, but it is currently at the centre of a huge debate about its future.

Reorganisation plans drawn up by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley have been put on hold by the Government because of the scale of opposition to them.

Some commentators have even said the plans, to put GPs in charge of most NHS budgets and make competition a central feature of the service, are the beginning of the end of the NHS as we know it.

The Government is expected to unveil details of its revised health plans next week, after the outcome of a consultation exercise is published.

But, despite this pause, NHS trusts still have to make major spending cuts in line with Government demands that the NHS makes efficiency savings totalling £20bn by 2015.

The Government insists that it will re-invest £1.7bn a year of these savings as part of modernising NHS services, but it is unclear how that money will be spent.

Earlier this week the Echo reported that South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs The James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, and the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, has introduced a programme to reduce spending by £22m. This will involve fewer nurses, fewer locum doctors, a recruitment freeze, a ban on replacing all capital equipment and a clamp-down on nonessential spending. There are also plans to combine wards at the Friarage.

Officials at the South Tees trust said they started the financial year with £6m less than the previous year.

The Middlesbrough-based trust is not alone.

Every NHS trust in the North-East and North Yorkshire has been asked to cut millions from their budgets.

The County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has to save £20m this year.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust has a target of just under £16m and North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust is being asked to save £20m this year.

Sources within the region’s NHS say that, while trust budgets have increased, the sum organisations are being required to save amounts to a reduction in funding.

They also say the cuts are adversely affecting the frontline as well as backroom services, and much of the money saved is being spent on the increased cost of new drugs, soaring utilities bills for hospitals and the cost of reorganisation, including making hundreds of managers redundant as part of plans to abolish primary care trusts and regional authorities.

And, despite Mr Cameron’s promise that the NHS would not be privatised, the North-East has recently seen the biggest prison health contract in the UK awarded to a private health care company, Care UK, rather than the three NHS trusts which have been providing the service to 5,000 inmates for years.

Welcoming the launch of The Northern Echo’s campaign, Glenn Turp, regional director of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Since 2010, the region has seen almost 2,000 jobs lost across the NHS. It’s not just through redundancies. We are also seeing staff retiring and not being replaced, as well as senior nurses being replaced by more junior, lessexperienced staff. We’ve also seen wards closed and literally hundreds of beds lost to the NHS.

“The Royal College of Nursing, through its Frontline First initiative, has been campaigning hard against the cuts, and we therefore welcome the launch of this important campaign by The Northern Echo, which will help shed more light on exactly what is happening. We strongly encourage patients and members of the public, as well as NHS employees, to get involved in the campaign. There has never been a more important time to stand up and be counted to help protect your NHS.”

The launch of Health Watch was also backed by Dr Clive Peedell, a member of the British Medical Association’s national council and a cancer specialist at The James Cook Hospital.

Dr Peedell, an outspoken critic of the Government’s NHS reform plans, said: “I think it is very important to record what services are being affected.”

More support came from Professor David Hunter, of Durham University, an expert in health service management.

He said the £20bn savings drive involved cuts on an “unprecedented scale” which had never been attempted by any other health service. He claimed the savings drive would be unrealistic.

“If people think it is bad this year, wait until next year and the year after, when Armageddon will break out and the cuts will really begin to bite,” he said.

George Rae, BMA chairman in the North- East, said: “I am at the annual conference of local medical committees and we are very sceptical about the NHS reforms and about what David Cameron said a few days ago.

“He said there wouldn’t be any big top-down upheavals in the health service, yet we are now facing the most radical reforms of the NHS since its inception. How much you can depend on these five guarantees depends on how much you believe what politicians say.”

CLARE WILLIAMS, Unison’s regional convenor, said: “It is vitally important that the public is aware of what the Government’s proposals mean for the NHS and the expansion of the private sector in our health provision.

“Already we are seeing the impact of this Tory-led Government on the NHS, and Cameron’s five pledges do nothing to allay fears for users of the NHS or those who work in the service.”

NHS North-East declined to comment, but Ali Wilson, director of commissioning for NHS Tees, said: “By delivering efficiency improvements, we plan to reinvest directly into frontline NHS services so that we can meet the future challenges of coping with an ageing population and the introduction of new treatments and technologies.

“By also increasing our focus on prevention and ensuring patients get access the right care at the right time, we can ensure that taxpayers’ money is invested wisely to deliver real benefits.

“Some of the services we are improving this year include access to mental health services, including dementia and alcohol treatment, care for people with long-term conditions, such as diabetes and COPD, and access to equipment services, such as telehealth and telecare.”

• You can contact Barry Nelson by emailing barry.nelson@nne.co.uk, telephoning 01325-505075, or post your comments on our website northernecho.co.uk/healthwatch