County braced for £40 million health cuts (From Worcester News)
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Worcestershire braced for £40 million health cuts
8:54am Monday 18th March 2013 in News By Tarik Al Rasheed
Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust is finding the cuts
HOSPITAL beds will be closed, more patients treated at home and jobs cut as part of a transformation of health services to save £40 million over the next five years.
Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust is having to find savings of about £8 million a year until 2017/18, about five per cent ofits overall service budgets.
About 10 per cent of the county's 200 community hospital beds will close initially, with the potential for more to follow if the new model is deemed a success.
About 300 of 4,500 jobs with the trust are also being cut, although bosses stress they do not envisage having to make significant redundancies, while many staff will be required to re-train.
Spending cuts will bemade in mental health, community care and children's services, while community hospitals will become "treatment hubs", offering fewer beds but a greater range of services under one roof.
Services will also be "integrated" across the health and social care system - reducing duplication and meaning patients will need to make fewer visits and tell their story to fewer people to access their treatment.
The changes will not affect Worcestershire's three acute hospitals - Worcestershire Royal, Kidderminster and the Alexandra in Redditch - which are managed by a separate trust and currently the subject of a separate review aimed at slashing £50 million from their budgets.
Although the financial element is clearly a huge driver of change, the trust said the main motivation is quality and continuing to improve the experience of patients and service users.
It said it would be re-configuring even if the need for savings was not there and that the new model is backed by its various patient groups, known as locality forums.
Chief executive Sarah Dugan said: "Although there is a financial challenge, the motivation is really about finding new and innovative ways of treating people in or as close to home as possible.
"This is what people tell us they want; whether they are a young person with a mental illness or are elderly, the overwhelming feedback is that people want to avoid going into hospital unless it is absolutely necessary."
Jan Ditheridge, director of service delivery, said closing beds did not mean community hospitals such as those in Malvern and Evesham, would be any less important in the future.
"We are not going to close community hospitals," she said.
"They are very precious to us and will be increasingly important in the future.
"Where we do remove beds, we will be using the space to provide other things."
She said the beds being closed initially were already surplus to requirements.
Comments(14)
drowningnotwaving
says...
10:20am Mon 18 Mar 13
frontline first i suppose.
My national insurance conributions have not come down, the number of beds and patients hasn't increased so what has changed to warrant another £40 mill cut?.
goodbye Mr Spicer your party has blown it again.
NHS staff the miners of the 21st century
Peter WR5
says...
10:34am Mon 18 Mar 13
bmoc55
says...
3:30pm Mon 18 Mar 13
Change is seen as a threat, but change can be positive, and without change the NHS will sink into a morass of inefficiency.
I have recently had an operation under the NHS, but at a Private Clinic. That is a change for the better; so to the naysayers I say wait and see how new changes work out before condeming them out of hand
old misery
says...
4:25pm Mon 18 Mar 13
woodyduck
says...
7:16pm Mon 18 Mar 13
when are community beds surplus to requirement?
Jabbadad
says...
8:56pm Mon 18 Mar 13
Blair said NO CUTS to the NHS
Brown Said NO CUTS to the NHS
Cameron Says NO CUTS to the NHS, but all the time they were and are making cuts by way of reductions in Wards, Beds, Nurses, changing many services to privatisation, and still not seeing the huge financial costs of bank nurses, many who actually work for the NHS and the Agencies.
Deliberate Tourist patients are costing £billions, as do those who migrate from countries who don't have health care.
If those who paid into private Health Care were to stop such schemes and rely on the NHS the system would collapse.
So we have seen more private Care in the Home schemes, (with 15 minute visits and even down to 5 minutes) Less care Home places (over 70,000 beds lost over the past 10 years), Virtual Beds whereby hospital services are given to some while remaining in their own homes, we are now hearing Virtual Hospitals, with Hospitals by streaming / evaluation being more difficult to access.
Never mind "Call The Midwife" as in my mums days for three of her four children born at home.,It seems that we will be scrubbing our kitchen tables off again for treatments by skilled but possibly not hospital staff.
iamthebinman
says...
7:54am Tue 19 Mar 13
It is common business knowledge that customers don't put any value on something they see as 'free' and as missed appointments are virtually never charged for, the patient looses nothing by not attending.
We can a family of four or five booked into our opticians for NHS eye tests and although we remind them that morning about attending, so often they just don't bother. As opticians we have so pay for their actions but at doctors and hospitals the NHS foots the bill.
We all forget things from time to time but not so often when we get hit in the pocket!
And just to add one more thing, the so called 'Tourist patients' mentioned above never miss appointments at our practice due to the respect they were taught!
sugarlump
says...
8:26am Tue 19 Mar 13
Landy44
says...
9:03am Tue 19 Mar 13
ALL political parties are to blame for the bloated size of the NHS, and it DOES need to be cut. The NHS is unfortunately a failed experiment that we can no longer afford, but are now dependent on.
Unfortunately, the cuts need to be in specific places, mostly in "management" and box tickers who create the bureacracy. I think it's fair to say some of the people at the coal face also need to go, based on their performance, but the majority of frontline staff that I've met are hard working, caring people who are prevented from doing a good job by bureacracy.
At the root of all this, we might as well blame the great British public for letting things get to the state they are now on our watch. If we weren't all so complacent palming off responsibility on ill equipped politicians, we might have a health service that is fit for purpose.
take a deep breath
says...
3:48pm Tue 19 Mar 13
Jabbadad
says...
5:49pm Tue 19 Mar 13
And of course we need the money for Bust enlargements that go wrong, and for fertility treatment.
Since when was it the right of anyone to have to have a child.
iamthebinman
says...
6:41pm Tue 19 Mar 13
Jabbadad wrote:I don't care who makes NHS appointments as long as they turn up for them. I would be more proud of a country that excepts and helps anyone that lives here than one that lets people waste it's valuable health care time.
In reply to iamthebinman I also agree that it is wrong to miss appointments unless there is a very good reason, and in some dental practices they actually charge for not turning up. However I must say that with his support for Tourist Patients, those who have lived and worked for many years and paid their dues into the governments treasury have actually paid into the system where as the Tourist patients have not. And I also understand that many countries who are supposed to be in the reciprocal health payments scheme are not paying huge bills accumulated by their citizens while over here on our NHS.
And of course we need the money for Bust enlargements that go wrong, and for fertility treatment.
Since when was it the right of anyone to have to have a child.
Malaky
says...
9:57pm Fri 22 Mar 13
If an appointment can only be made by paying out real money, good old ackers, then people will begin to appreciate what they have.
The very needy can be given a card that absolves them from payment, but also creates a record of how they use/abuse the card.
It is so simple, but it requires political will, and there is very little backbone left in the old political parties!
jb says...
9:33am Mon 18 Mar 13
I've had recent experience of a health worker being given responsibilities normally covered by a social worker. The outcome resulted in me making complaints to the county council, even one of the the managers said training had been insufficient for the person involved. Trying to "integrate" services may save money but it will also in some areas dilute the quality of service needed in certain roles.