‘Cuts will lead to patient deaths’: Hospitals fire medical staff after being told to balance the books

Hospitals are being forced to cut back on medical staff, jeopardizing their ability to care for patients, senior health leaders have warned.

NHS trusts are reporting budget shortfalls after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt gave England’s health service £2.5 billion in extra funding, which only covers inflation and pay rises.

The aging of the UK population and the impact of more than 6 million patients waiting for more than 7.5 million treatments means that demand on healthcare has increased significantly.

NHS leaders had recruited medical staff as part of their efforts to tackle the waiting list backlog, one of Rishi Sunak’s five pledges, but say they are now being told their priority must be to balance the books . The original aim was to reduce NHS England’s £4.6bn bill for temporary workers, but that has been extended to permanent staff and could mean waiting lists for some treatments rise rather than fall.

There are now 25 healthcare settings included in NHS England’s recovery support programme, the equivalent of special measures, with others reporting significant shortages. Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has a gap of £194.7m. Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust is at £57 million, and King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust expects to reach £90 million.

The Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care System, which includes four NHS bodies, is facing a £130 million deficit and would need to cut 10% of its workforce, or 2,300 jobs, to break even. Board member Jon Rouse said at a recent meeting that attempting to resolve the problem within a year would cause “significant harm, including … patient harm.” Health Service Journal reported.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said many organizations were looking for efficiency savings of up to 10%, while 1.5% was a realistic maximum. “There isn’t a healthcare leader who isn’t focused on how on earth they’re going to balance the books… But many say the only way they can manage to balance their books is by delivering services effectively to decrease. they can offer.

“There is no doubt that this will impact physician positions and staff coverage. People will try to cut down on agency costs if they can. But temporary workers are there to fill gaps. It is also widely recognized that the NHS is under-managed. So cutting back on managers and administrators only means putting a greater burden on physicians.”

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund, said hospital leaders had been trying to recruit staff to reduce vacancies, which stood at 7.6% last December. Now they were told: “No, your main job is to balance the books and as a result you will have to reduce staff because that is the biggest area of ​​expenditure,” he said.

“When we walk around the hospitals, people still say, ‘We’re understaffed, we’re understaffed especially at night, so we don’t feel like we’re in a position to cut back on numbers without inevitably having an impact on patient care’, whether that is quality of care or access to care.”

Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, said there were still 110,000 vacancies across England and that “severe staff shortages… could become worse as some trusts report plans to reduce staff numbers to help balance the books.

“Trusts are doing everything they can to protect patient services and continue to tackle waiting lists, but costs, not least the repair backlog of more than £11 billion, continue to rise. And unless the government fully funds pay rises for NHS staff by 2024-2025, the service may have to find billions of pounds for wage costs from already tight budgets.”

Anita Charlesworth, research director at the Health Foundation, said: “We need to break these endless cycles of boom and bust and that means creating a stable and sustainable workforce that has the equipment and resources it needs to deliver high-quality care. to deliver. Hastily cutting staff at a time when waiting lists for electives exceed 7.5 million is counterproductive and would undermine the longer-term recovery of the NHS.”

Professor Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “I am making a point that cuts to nursing will lead to patient deaths. NHS leaders are preparing to make staff cuts, asking an already burnt-out workforce to do even more without having to think again. It’s incredibly dangerous.”

An NHS spokesperson said: “NHS organizations are developing their financial plans which will focus on continuing to prioritize patient care while delivering the best value for the taxpayer within available resources.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said the NHS is receiving record funding of almost £165 billion a year, “an increase of 13% in real terms compared to 2019-2020, supporting trusts and enabling them to continue to perform on what matters most to them. patients – improving access to services and reducing waiting lists.

“At the Spring Budget, the Chancellor announced that NHS England will receive a £2.5 billion daily funding boost this year and will invest a further £3.4 billion in the latest technology from 2025, unlocking £35 billion in savings .”