CALLS for a £200 million Government bailout for Worcestershire’s struggling NHS will not yield fruit, say health experts.
Health experts have been asked for their advice about a motion from Wor-cestershire county councillors to write to the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, to urge the Government to make up the multi-million pound shortfall.
The notice of motion by Labour councillor Peter McDonald and seconded by Richard Udall, made at a meeting on September 13, was referred to the Worcestershire Health and Wellbeing Board by Conservative county councillor Marcus Hart, who is the chairman of that board, and Elizabeth Eyre.
The board met to discuss the notice of motion which is scheduled to come back before a full meeting of Worcestershire County Council in January.
The motion asks the council to fully support the ‘Save the Alex’ campaign, which seeks to protect services at the Alexandra Hospital at Redditch following the launch of the joint services review.
The review led to concerns about the future of its emergency and maternity departments in Redditch although a shortlist of options for the future of the NHS is not scheduled to be published until the new year.
As previously reported, the review seeks to address staffing shortages in certain hospital specialist areas such as paediatrics and obstetrics.
It also seeks to address a funding gap of £200 million scheduled to open up because available cash is not increasing fast enough to meet the demand for services from a growing population with complex needs.
Mark Dutton, chief finance officer for South Worcestershire Clinical Commissioning Group, the GP-led organisation which manages NHS budgets in Worcester, told the board: “You can put a request in but I don’t think that would get support from the secretary of state.”
Eamonn Kelly, chief executive of the West Mercia Primary Care Trust cluster board, said under the Health and Social Care Bill the application would have to be made to the National Commissioning Board, not the Secretary of State for Health.
He said: “The £200 million is a productivity challenge, not a funding shortfall. Requests of this nature could be made by any clinical commissioning group in the country who will also be facing that challenge.”
Chairman Marcus Hart said there had as yet been no formal proposal to close the accident and emergency department at Redditch as part of the Joint Services Review.
He said every local authority in the country could write to the secretary of state “but we could all predict what the answer is going to be’.