Monday 28 June 2010

NHS suffering devastating cuts to jobs and services, warns BMA

The British Medical Association has said that thousands of doctors and nurses face being made redundant or not replaced if they leave and that many hospitals have cut treatments, as the Government’s austerity drive hits the health service.


Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has boasted that frontline services would be protected. But it emerged yesterday that in his Cambridge constituency, Addenbrooke’s Hospital is planning to sack 170 nurses and up to 500 staff in total over the next year.

A survey for the BMA asked 361 doctors, who between them represent committees at all of Britain’s hospital trusts and some larger primary care trusts, how the NHS was being affected by the demand to make £20 billion of cuts.  It comes as the Coalition faces political pressure to reverse its pledge to ring-fence health spending.  The BMA found that 43% of those who responded said there was a freeze on recruiting doctors and nurses at their trust. Almost as many, 40%, said that patient treatments, including varicose vein operations and blood tests, were being rationed.  GPs in Bedfordshire said they had been told not to refer patients with certain conditions, such as skin lesions and cysts, to hospitals except in exceptional circumstances.

Nearly a quarter of those who responded said that their trust was planning to make workers redundant. Although the majority of these would not affect frontline staff, the union warned that cuts to administrative workers could force doctors and nurses to spend more time on these duties and less time with patients.  The poll – to which 92 doctors responded – represents the first real evidence of how the NHS has been hit by the cuts. It found trusts were trying to make annual savings of six per cent on average. The Government has promised to guarantee NHS spending growth in real terms but the BMA says this will be “minimal”. The association called the cuts potentially “devastating”.

Dr Hamish Meldrum, the chairman of the BMA, said: “Whilst we accept that difficult decisions need to be taken in this tight financial climate, there is a real danger that cutting back on health now will have a long-lasting impact on our ability to maintain high-quality, comprehensive and universal care in the future.”