The axe falls on the 'protected' NHS

[atlantis]

In Proposals were drawn up by the 10 English strategic health authorities for productivity and efficiency savings.

'Tens of thousands of NHS workers could be sacked and thousands of hospital beds lost.

The plans could also see procedures such as hip replacements scrapped and patients encouraged to email doctors rather than visit surgeries.

Sir David Nicholson spoke of the need to make between £15 and £20 billion in productivity efficiency savings over three years.

South East Coast region, which covers Surrey, Kent and Sussex, up to £1.6billion must be saved.

A document marked 'restricted' and circulated among SHA board members suggests 10,000 or more of the region's 100,000 NHS workers may lose their jobs

'The new financial environment demands that the trend in workforce growth must be reversed.'

It said staffing in the acute sector, covering hospitals, 'can be expected to decline faster and further' than elsewhere.

In London, which faces £5 billion in cuts, documents show managers believe up to £2 billion can be saved from community care budgets.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261139/Labours-secret-plans-axe-tens-thousands-NHS-jobs.html

Its still very wooly though isnt it. It doesnt specify who will go and how it will be done does it.
Dont get me wrong i am very worried for my job and for my coleagues as i interpret it as "front line workers" so that would be nurses of all denominations.

Scary stuff, lets see what the next 5 years brings.

I'm inclined to take it with a pinch of salt.

The nhs has been reorganising for a while. Some trusts have already done it, some are doing it and others may not have started. Its all part of the governments current plan.

If its part of the reorganisation that other pct are already carrying out then what it means is that some services provided by the acute sector will be provided by the community and the acute sector will focus on "acute" episodes. a lot of routine out patient care will be carried out in the community.

The job cuts are likely to take the from of early retirement and not replacing staff who leave.

I dont work that area so dont know where the reoganisation is up to but thats how it sounds.

Not that you could rely on the dm to inform you of that either.

"Not that you could rely on the dm to inform you of that either. "

Sadly it's not just in the dm;

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7078566.ece

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7529454/Hospital-wards-to-shut-in-secret-NHS-cuts.html

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jun/10/nhs-jobs-at-risk

Times, telegraph and even the labour loving guardian are all running it.

I also work in the acute sector and see lots of areas where funding is wasted but none of this will be solved by sacking frontline staff.

There are massive wastes of public funding in my Trust due to the 18wk outpatient care pathway initiative. Extra clinics run at MASSIVE cost to the tax payer often run by incredibly expensive third party private medical care companies such as Medinet who come in and charge a fortune per patient seen. All this, in order to avoid breaching unrealistic gvt targets which have already been set in an environment where massive cuts and recruitment freezes have been made so we have fewer clinical and admin staff of our own on the payroll to do it.

So rather than deal with the problem at the root, they powers that be are firefighting and bringing in incredibly expensive temp staff, bank staff and locum or private sector staff to cover the deficit. This may fix things in the short term but it doesn't solve the main problem (we have long lists because we don't have enough medical staff to provide the care required to the number of patients being referred). Also the costs of numerous short term fixes are hugely expensive when compared to the cost of a salary for permanent staff.

Bed shortages are rife, we are struggling for theatre slots in our hospital, we had endless theatre sessions cancelled and now are under massive pressure to operate on patients within their alloted 18wks wait (or we get fined, increasing the Trust debt). Then those pts have to found a bed. Then they have to be followed up in clinic. It is getting nigh on impossible.

Further cuts will kill us. We are already seemingly running on a skeleton staff. Although there does seem to be superfluous layers of management in my Trust. There certainly is no need for the layer between me and the layer above my line manager.

Atlantis, my Trust has been freezing posts for a couple of years now. When people resign, reduce their hours, retire or get the boot then the funding is not renewed and the post is not advertised (in the case of reduced hours, the 'lost' hours are not redistributed elsewhere within the dept, they are simply no longer funded)

Nomdeplume, we have had two local hospitals all but shut down and turned into 'urgent' care centres and all service transfered to one hospital in another area, many lost their jobs, the 'care' is terrible and waiting times have shot up (it's so bad you can't book online and I have been waiting nearly 8 months for an appointment with neuro) and the staff at the hospital admit they can't cope.

For Brown to claim he's investing and protecting the nhs, quite frankly I don't see where.

The NHS needs a major shake up.

It needs to be run by doctors and nurses and NOT by people qualified in hotel management!

They need to put the money into beds and care, not into refurbishing concourses every six months, laying a carpet then ripping it up, and laying a new one because it was the wrong shade of blue.

They need to not have "hotel services" because they are NOT hotels!

They need to get rid of useless layers of management and focus on caring.

Do you have any idea how much money is chucked down the toilet in the NHS? While they scrimp on cleaning, patients' food, beds and actual care, they throw money away on refurbishing "front of house" again and again and again, and the managers all have a jolly old time of it.

Frankly, I think there is enough money in the NHS for it to do a fantastic job, if it wasn't so abused and if it was once again in the business of caring for people.

Get rid of the managers who are trying to run hotels (because that's what they're trained in!) and give hospitals to doctors and nurses and you'll find there's plenty of money to actually care for people!

Oh so its not just me who gets annoyed by the constant rebranding, the new signs every couple of years, and the new stationary as a result.

Or worse the manangement consultants that are employed at horrendous expense to consult with staff, take them away from frontline care to do so, then add in more paperwork. When really the management could have got off their arses to talk to staff and find out what the problems were - at no extra cost.

Glad I'm not the only one.

Some of the NHS needs reorganising, it could be more efficient. The trouble is you cant rely on the managers to make the right decisions or the government to stop meddling.every fecking week

The cuts are going to be savage. So far Andy Burnham has fessed up to a whole load of nonsense - £550m by 'reducing staff sickness' for instance (how, exactly?).

Bet they'll still find pots of cash to pay consultants like McKinsey's though.

lol atlantis

are you really a plant from Tory HQ?

Reducing staff sickness- by having people afraid to go off sick because they will get pulled by the manager and occupational health.

So you will have infectious frontline staff in work.

Why didn't they make some of these efficiency savings earlier? Do they think taxpayers like there money being wasted?

With a rapidly aging population and savage cuts to the NHS I pray none of us ever get sick.

yy - agree re use of external consultants
I do not understand why this happens.

Trust managers should be liaising with project officers DOH and other foundation trusts to find out about best practice.

I am also shocked at the amount of money leaving the NHS for the private sector. I work in a highly specialist tertiary area of inpatient care, and a significant proportion of our patients have had lengthy (and unproductive) admissions to the private sector whilst awaiting a bed at our unit.

I like Justmmytwopenceworth's post

spot on

There is so much waste on a day to day basis .

In my job in the last 2 yrs I have had 3 uniform changes-why only differenceis colour .

We use branded Lexmark printer cartridges , down the corridor the OT's use a different printer and use another very expensive branded ink cartridges , yet another dept use another brand.
We were all sitting discussing the madness of this in the coffee room.

There is so much staff sickness in the NHS. I am going to be lynched for this but I really think if staff weren't paid their full rate when off sick there wouldn't be as much sickness.

My dh runs a business , we used to have problems with staff calling in sick until we stopped paying them when they were off isck , they only get SSP. Staff abscence is now minimal since then.

I'll stop short of lynching but in fairness the nature of the work contributes to some of the sickness.

Plus do you really want someone who is infectious caring for you, and possibly infecting you, when you are less able to fend off illnes and it could prolong your hospital stay. Or worse with immunosuppressed patients.

Having said that some people do take the piss and that does need stopping.

I woule say that a large % of sickenss in the NHS is not infectious related at all,

would you? I cant say thats my experience in general.

I work with quite a few who would drag themselves in no matter what too.

I can think of a few colleagues over the years who have swung the lead but they are in the minority.

Well I am a nurse and that's my experience and opinion.

As am I. Guess its just different experiences.

Plenty of money to be saved in middle/senior management....
I sat in a 2 hour meeting at a PCT on Friday and 15 people attended it. It was probably only relevant to 5 of them to be honest. At least half of them are paid more than £40K a year I'd reckon....

The problem in the NHS (as with a lot of the public sector) is too many people 'sitting' in highly paid jobs 'keeping their head down' - being pretty crap and inefficient, but not so inefficient that anyone will bother to fire them.

It's always interesting to hear NHS people talk at this time of year too, as the budget year end is approaching... I've heard various managers talking about needed to 'urgently spend money' or else they'll lose it.... the focus is just on spending it.... no discussion about the efficiency/ whether it woudl be better to redirect or even NOT spend! The mentality is that you HAVE to spend 'to budget' or else next years budget will be reduced even more.

I've also seen some well-dodgey awarding of contracts to mates/ family....

I'm not a nurse and as a prospective patient am very firmly of the opinion that healthcare professionals with infectious diseases should stay at home, thanks very much! I'd rather fund sick pay and agency cover than have people spreading nasty diseases - there's enough of that from the patients.

I'm sure McKinsey's could fiddle the maths so it looks as if sickness absence in the NHS is a major problem, though. They'd probably ignore sick leave due to assaults by patients, for instance. My sister's a nurse and has permanent hearing loss in one eye thanks to be clobbered (by a man with learning disabilties who was distressed, so not entirely deliberate and certainly not intending any long-term consequences).

MUST go to bed, when you get to the point of thinking someone has hearing loss in one eye your brain really has shut down...

"lol atlantis

are you really a plant from Tory HQ?"

I'm not a radical tory morning paper I think I made that clear before, if I thought ukip would get in I would vote for them.

Plus I think i've been on here too long arguing against the injustices in the family courts to be a 'plant'.

But tell me do 'plants' get paid for their time, if so i'm interested, how do I apply?

"MUST go to bed, when you get to the point of thinking someone has hearing loss in one eye your brain really has shut down... "

Bless edam, that did make me chuckle.

I think front line staff are very unprotected and every aspect of their work, from all sorts of patients, especially drunks, something needs to be done.

My son was on a high dependency surgical unit when he was paralysed and there was a woman (young girl really) who had had brain surgury and she was very violent (not her fault) but the nurses used to get smacked and my son used to wake up at night (unable to move) she would be starring down ath him (very scarey).