Wednesday, June 06, 2007

NHS fears despite books balancing

Ministers have confirmed the NHS has balanced its books - although many hospitals and other parts of the service are still struggling with debt.

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt staked her job on wiping out the debt in 2006-07, and the
figures show a surplus of £510m.

However, more than one in five NHS organisations were in the red.

The book balancing needed training and public health budget cuts. Extra cash due to the service was also held back.
In a speech on Wednesday, Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants' committee, will say the cuts have been "excessive".

"It takes weeks to cut, it takes years to rebuild trust. Morale is at an all-time low.

"The profession is angry because of this government's mishandling of the health service and has lost all confidence that the government can solve the problems it has created."

He will also warn ministers: "We will not stand by and let you decimate hospitals for purely financial reasons."

The latest figures show that the combined debt of the 22% of NHS organisations who failed to break even in 2006-07 was £911m.

In the previous financial year the NHS ran up an overall deficit of more than £500m, and the
gross deficit - the total of all those organisations which ran up deficits - was £1.3bn.

However, the NHS has only managed to balance the books in 2006-07 by taking money from elsewhere.

First of all, £1.8bn of the extra money due to the NHS in 2006-7 - about a quarter of the total increase - was held back.

And regional managers working for strategic health bosses have also made cuts to central budgets, such as training, to build up a £450m contingency fund.

'Excessive' cuts

That is on top of the thousands of job losses that have been forced on NHS trusts - 17,000 in the past 12 months, according to the NHS Information Centre.

And on the day the figures are announced the Times newspaper is reporting that it has seen a government memo revealing that more than half of patients are still waiting longer than 18 weeks for treatment.

Ministers, due to publish full data on waits on Thursday, have pledged that by the end of next year all patients will be treated within this time limit.

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said: "Cutting education and training and plundering public health budgets is not the way to manage the future of our NHS.

"No other business would be run on boom and bust and neither should the health service."

WELL DO THEY LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD?
HINCHINGBROOKE HAS A £13.9M DEBT AND CAMBS PCT HAS A £51M DEBT, WE ARE UNDERFUNDED BY £1,000 PER PATIENT, HAVE AN AGEING POPULATION, WITH 1,300 HOUSES PLANNED FOR HUNTINGDON, 2,000 AT NORTHSTOWE, 10,000 AT OAKINGTON, 1,000 AT CAMBOURNE AND THEY WANT TO RUN THE HOSPITAL DOWN

THE 2 "LOCAL" WELL 20 PLUS MILES AWAY, FOUNDATIONS ARE BURSTING AT THE SEAMS AND IN ALL HONESTY ONLY WANT THE "GOLD STAR" WORK AND NOT THE RUN OF THE MILL  STUFF...................

GET REAL AND INVEST IN HINCHINGBROOKE