Twenty hospitals must shut to tackle NHS crisis, urges key health thinktank

Leading health experts say services cannot be sustained and the government must wield the axe – risking wrath from public Twenty hospitals must shut if the NHS is to improve its levels of care, according to leading health experts and government advisers. Fears are growing that the row over health secretary Andrew Lansley’s reforms has proved a distraction from the need to act quickly amid a financial crisis within the health service. Problems over the controversial Health and Social Care Bill appear far from over, with many peers determined to subject the revised legislation to thorough scrutiny in the Lords. However, writing for the Observer today , Professor Chris Ham, chief executive of the King’s Fund, an influential health thinktank, calls on the government to focus on drastic cuts to 10% of the country’s hospitals amid a squeeze on spending on the NHS. Ham writes: “The challenge of improving care by changing where services are provided is not new. What is different today is the financial pressures facing the NHS and the prospect that funding in England will not increase above the rate of inflation for at least four years. Several hospitals have large deficits and it is clear that existing services cannot be sustained either clinically or financially. Financial pressures are increasing by the day and will adversely affect quality unless ministers recognise the urgent need to change the way services are provided. “Up to 20 hospitals, around 10% of the total in England, may not be financially sustainable and will have to be merged or taken over. Many others face financial or clinical challenges that require changes to the services they provide.” A source close to the government said Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, was aware that 20 of his hospitals needed to close or merge. “It has been a storm brewing, but everyone knows it has to be done,” the source added. “The problem – and the government knows it – is that people will link the reform bill with these closures. But this needs to happen.” Professor Steve Field, who headed the government’s NHS reforms “listening exercise”, also backed Ham, although he conceded that the cuts would provoke a furious backlash, particularly in London, which is set to be disproportionately hit. “It’s time we grasped the nettle of reconfiguration,” Field said. “Unless we tackle this, we won’t be able to meet the demands of the ageing population. It’s difficult and unpopular, but if we do it we can produce better, safer services for patients and will ultimately save lives. “The NHS’s future will inevitably mean more care being delivered outside of hospitals, which means that over time we will need fewer hospitals than we have today, particularly in the bigger cities, and especially in London, where it’s been a problem for many years that a lot of hospitals all try to do the same thing, which results in some surgeons doing too few cases.” The leader of Britain’s hospital doctors also backed calls for change. Sir Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said concentrating certain types of care into a smaller number of sites benefited patients because those hospitals end up with bigger teams of specialists and find it much easier to have a fully staffed rota. “People want a hospital at the end of the road, just as they want a library, swimming pool or post office nearby. But it’s not possible,” he said. Dr Jennifer Dixon, director of the Nuffield Trust health thinktank and a member of the Downing Street “kitchen cabinet”, which is advising on the future of the NHS, added that growing financial pressures upon it – which include flat budgets until 2015 and an ongoing £20bn savings drive – meant hospitals are at risk of going bust: “A number of hospitals – in the ballpark of 20 to 30 – are simply not financially viable in their current form now and would be effectively bankrupt unless they can change their models of care.” NHS Health Health policy Thinktanks Andrew Lansley Public services policy Denis Campbell Daniel Boffey Toby Helm guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 18, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.