31 March 2006
Hospitals might have to close wards to produce cash savings from a new efficiency drive, the NHS Confederation said this week.
In the latest initiative highlighting the scope for greater productivity in the NHS, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said some hospitals admitted patients ahead of their surgery for no clinical reason.
Reducing these early admissions to the average hospital would save 390,000 bed days and £78m a year.
'Improved patient care and increased efficiency go hand in hand,' she said. 'Finding out the patient is unfit for surgery — which could have been established before the operation — is another example of a wasted bed day.'
But confederation chief executive Gill Morgan said the cash might not be released if unused beds and wards remained open.
She said: 'A fixation with hospital buildings is preventing the development of new and imaginative services.
'We will have to work hard to convince the public that, with technological advances and a shift to providing more care out of hospitals, the loss of beds and wards doesn't necessarily equate to a decline in services.'
PFmar2006
