NHS managers defend action on deficits

1 Sep 05
The NHS Confederation has slammed suggestions that health service managers are making 'knee-jerk decisions' to protect their jobs.

02 September 2005

The NHS Confederation has slammed suggestions that health service managers are making 'knee-jerk decisions' to protect their jobs.

This week the British Medical Association said there was a risk that managers might choose to tackle the financial crisis in hospital trusts in England by cutting jobs and closing departments.

The association's consultants' leader Paul Miller said he was receiving anecdotal evidence that hospitals were in financial difficulty and warned that cuts would affect patient care.

He said: 'We're deeply concerned that managers, running frightened for their jobs, are making knee-jerk decisions about the reduction or closure of services in response to short-term funding problems.'

Miller expressed his concern in a letter to Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt and said the BMA would survey all English trusts to uncover the true financial position. He also attacked the funding of private sector diagnostic facilities, alleging they had underperformed.

Confederation chief executive Gill Morgan said she was disappointed that the BMA, while raising a legitimate concern, had done so by attacking NHS managers.

'Having worked in the NHS as both a doctor and a manager, I resent the inference that managers are not motivated by a desire to improve the quality of care that the NHS provides.

'It is simply untrue to say that managers who are taking decisions about how to balance their budgets, while maintaining high-quality clinical services, have “no appreciation of the long-term consequences for patient services”, as the BMA alleges,' she said.

Morgan said the overall NHS debt at the end of March 2005 was equivalent to 0.2% of its £67.4bn budget, and 25% of trusts did not balance their books.

The confederation also had evidence of growing deficits at some NHS trusts. She urged those trusts to examine a full range of options to correct the situation.

But she added: 'Doctors also have a vital role to play in maximising productivity by, for example, working with managers to help increase day case rates and decrease lengths of stay.

'If recruitment freezes are necessary, NHS trusts will carry them out in a way that safeguards the quality and safety of frontline patient care.'

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