NEWS
More hospital consolidations as provider finances are squeezed
South London Healthcare Trust has been put into special measures as the first official ‘unsustainable provider’, while ten hospitals in North Yorkshire are now being run by a single trust, and services in Mid Yorkshire are also being reconfigured to cope with a financial chasm.
It is thought many more providers could yet face similar ructions in the face of budget crises, with the DH naming 21 trusts that may be “clinically and financially unsustainable” – many of which are already in the process of being merged or taken over.
Scarborough & North East Yorkshire Health Care NHS Trust was identified as financially unsustainable and over 2,000 of its staff are being transferred to York Teaching Hospital NHS FT – a new single organisation that will employ 8,500 staff
across
‘We will repeal the Act’ – Burnham
The Labour Party has given its firmest pledge yet to scrap the NHS reforms if it wins the next general election.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the Health & Social Care Act undermines the NHS and opens the door to further privatisation.
Speaking in an opposition day debate, Burnham said: “It is a defective, sub-optimal piece of legislation that is saddling the NHS with a complicated mess. In those circumstances, it would be irresponsible to leave it in place.
“I don’t want those NHS organisations in outright competition, hospital versus hospital. I want them working collaboratively. We will repeal the Bill but no, there won’t be a top down reorganisation of the kind we have seen inflicted on the NHS.”
ten hospitals in North and East Yorkshire.
Patrick Crowley, chief executive of the York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “In many respects this marks the beginning rather than the end of the process. It is now that much of the detailed work must be undertaken to integrate the two organisations and ensure we’re all working towards bringing the best out of the new trust and making sure we’re offering the very best services that our patients deserve.”
Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust must save £24m by April by 2013, and is planning a major reconfiguration of its services.
The Department of Health’s director of provider delivery, Matthew Kershaw, has previously suggested that “more radical
solutions” may be necessary to secure the trust’s future, and that that trust may need to enter the Unsustainable Providers Regime. Kershaw himself has recently been appointed at another South London Healthcare Trust to find a long-term solution to its financial woes (see panel).
Mid Yorkshire will not be in a financial position to gain FT status in the “foreseeable future”, let alone by April 2013. Its interim chief executive Stephen Eames said: “The challenges faced by the trust have been a matter of public concern for many years. The discussions we have had with people so far have brought us to the point where we feel we have two options to consider.
“The first looks at doing what we must do to make services clinically safe and sustainable, whilst the second goes further,
Royal Brompton, Leeds & Leicester lose child heart surgery units
Children’s heart surgery will be centralised to seven centres, with Leicester and Leeds losing their surgical units, alongside the Royal Brompton in London.
The Joint Committee of
Primary Care Trusts (JCPCT) announced that centres will be kept open at Newcastle, Liverpool,
Birmingham, Bristol,
Southampton and two in London; Great Ormond Street and Evelina Children’s Hospital.
The decision follows the Safe and Sustainable Review, which suggested that treating children in larger centres with more specialised
surgeons should
provide better outcomes than multiple local units. The networks are due to be operational in 2014, as the changes are implemented, managed by Network Boards.
Sir Neil McKay CB, chairman of
the JCPCT, called it “a landmark decision that clinicians and patients have long called for”.
More background and reaction at
www.nationalhealthexecutive. com
radically reorganising services
across our hospital sites to make the best use of resources.”
DH man takes over at South London
Matthew Kershaw has taken over the functions of the board at South London Healthcare Trust as the special administrator appointed when the organisation was forced into the Unsustainable Providers Regime.
Kershaw, the DH’s National Director for Provider Delivery, is forming a Clinical Advisory Panel to help him turn around the trust. He must produce draft recommendations on its future by October 29.
Health secretary Andrew
Lansley said: “Past efforts have not succeeded in putting the trust on a sustainable path.
“Matthew, working with
clinicians, all other staff, commissioners, patients, the public and other stakeholders, must now drive the changes and shape a sustainable solution for [the] trust and the local health economy.”
Lansley praised the “hard work” of the frontline staff.
Kershaw said: “The Trust is overspending by £1.3m each week, meaning vital resources are being diverted away from other services and communities – this is not acceptable or fair. Patients and taxpayers deserve more than this.”
national health executive Jul/Aug 12 | 5
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