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Healthcare cuts on the way to plug budget deficit
By Mike WrightJuly 27, 2010
HEALTH services in Hampshire are facing a £230m financial black hole unless sweeping cutbacks and savings can be made.
NHS Hampshire, which manages and funds all frontline health services such as trips to the dentist and GPs, said that even though it was not facing funding cuts, growing costs and inflation would blow a huge hole in its budget over the next couple of years.
As well as redundancies in the health sector and a massive reduction in local NHS management jobs, the trust has said it intends to head off the looming deficit by keeping more people out of hospital beds.
It said it aimed to do this by educating people on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle as well as improving out-of-hospital care for the long-term ill.
The move comes after the coalition government signalled that although it would not slash health spending, the NHS would not receive the unprecedented cash increases it enjoyed under Labour.
As well as the huge financial problems, NHS Hampshire is itself facing the axe as part of sweeping reforms planned by the new government.
Earlier this month, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley outlined proposals that would see all Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) such as NHS Hampshire abolished by 2013.
In their place Mr Lansley said he wanted to see PCT budgets handed down to GPs who would then commission the care and treatments for their patients.
But despite the axe hanging over the PCT, board members said they would be pressing ahead with their cost reduction programme as planned.
At a meeting held in Aldershot’s Princes Hall last Thursday (July 22), director of performance and standards Richard Samuel said the NHS was due to see a sharp drop in its real-term funding.
"Over the last 10 years we have seen unprecedented levels of investment in the National Health Service," he said.
"That investment has brought a transformation in care and massive improvement in waiting times."
Over the past decade he said NHS Hampshire, which is the largest PCT in the country, had seen its funding more than double.
In 2000 it was receiving £116m from the government, but that had surged to £350 by 2010.
However, Mr Samuel said the current levels of funding the coalition government was proposing would mean demand for services would start to outstrip supply in the next four years.
He said if the trust did nothing, Hampshire was facing an incremental deficit of £51m next year, then £110m in 2011-12, £167m in 2012-13 and finally £230m by 2013-14.
The blueprint for the programme of cuts and savings across NHS services in Hampshire were outlined in a report to the board.
The first was to increase productivity by getting more out of its staff and equipment. The trust also said it hoped to keep more people out of hospital beds by improving home care for the chronically ill and .
Plans include launching an initiative to reduce the number of alcohol-related hospital admissions, creating a "virtual ward" in the homes of the chronically ill by improving partnership working with social services and the voluntary sector, and commissioning an audit of the trust's estates to find out which buildings could be better used in order to save cash.
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