NHS operations slashed

Article published: Friday, January 21st 2011

NHS trusts in Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Heywood and Middleton have stopped providing 57 types of non-emergency surgery until April as part of their “financial recovery plan” for 2010/11.

A leaflet to patients said surgeries such as joint replacement and cataract surgery will only be carried out in “exceptional circumstances.”

Other halted operations include cosmetic surgeries, wisdom teeth extraction, hysterectomies and haemorrhoid surgery. The leaflet explained the reasoning behind the changes: “Carrying out operations that are not of great health benefit uses up resources that could be spent on really making a difference elsewhere.

“We know, for example, that one in five people who have a total knee replacement say a year later that they don’t really feel it was a real benefit.”

Further cuts are expected in the upcoming financial year, with a report to the board of Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Primary Care Trust stating the need to find savings of £17.2m by 2012. While cuts to management costs and “procedures of limited value” amounted to around £1m each, other services hit include mental health and children’s services. More is  likely to come, as £7.4m of cuts are still to be identified.

Although David Cameron assured voters prior to the election that he would not cut the NHS and the government has ‘ringfenced’ NHS spending, meaning funds will not be directly reduced, in practice the health service is being made to cut a large proportion of its spending. Rising health costs associated with inflation, the UK’s aging population and advances in medical technology means the government now expects £20bn in “efficiency savings” from the health service’s £100bn budget by the end of 2015.

Additional squeezes are expected due to implementation of the government’s intended market reforms to the NHS, with health secretary Andrew Lansley estimating the direct short-term cost of the proposals to amount to £1.4bn. Over the long run the government says it will reduce administration costs by 33 per cent and save roughly £10bn over the next ten years.

A National Audit Office report issued on January 20 cast doubt on these claims, warning of “recurring issues of weak cost control” in similar public sector shake-ups and “a number of risks to service quality.” The changes have been criticised by doctors, with the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Dr Clare Gerada warning that “no-one has thought through the implications of these plans and there are really big issues.”

Richard Goulding

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Comments

1. I wonder how much the consultants who told them where to make these effiency savings were paid? When it comes to public services they are the modern-day equivalent of the middlemen who engorged themselves while people starved in the Great Famine – they only difference being that they are invisible and largely unheard of

   Comment by Red Mick on January 22, 2011 at 5:15 pm

2. ‘Other halted operations include cosmetic surgeries’

   Never mind halting them.

   Why were they ever started on a tax funded health care service?

   Comment by simon on January 23, 2011 at 12:37 am

3. By the way, a serious news service should seek out opinions just a teeny weeny bit more independent than those of ‘the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Dr Clare Gerada’.

   GPs are paid from public cash. It is hardly surprising that they are not happy with any cuts in public funding.

   Comment by simon on January 23, 2011 at 12:42 am

4. I think the point is that the Tories are trying to make it out that giving the commissioning power to GPs is a devolution of ‘power to local people’ and a removal of bureaucratic state institutions making decisions. However the reality is that they are not equipped or experienced to make these strategic decisions and themselves are opposed to such changes.

   Comment by michaelp on January 24, 2011 at 1:54 pm

5. there is a demo tomorrow at Boots based around saving the NHS
   http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=139136299479192

   Comment by Dave on January 25, 2011 at 3:07 pm

The comments are closed.