By Tash Shifrin
21 January 2010
NHS organisations are struggling to draw up plans for finance, contracted activity and the future shape of community services to meet severe deadlines imposed by the Department of Health.
The warning from health service leaders comes as the British Medical Association sounded the alarm over ‘record’ cuts and closures in London.
Chris Calkin, spokesman for the Healthcare Financial Management Association, told Public Finance that the tight timetable for drawing up plans and the contracts between trusts and primary care trusts was a ‘big concern’.
The NHS Operating Framework, published last month, says contracts must be agreed by March 1. But strategic health authorities – under pressure to provide financial plans to the DoH by January 29 – are seeking information from trusts urgently.
PCTs and trusts are hampered by the delay to the final NHS treatments tariff, which is not expected to be published before mid-February.
Calkin, who is also finance director at University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust, said: ‘We’ve got to get a plan in by Monday and without agreed contract levels for the next year and without the financial tariff, these plans are at best indicative.’
David Stout, director of the Primary Care Trust Network, warned that, for some PCTs, the deadline for agreeing the future shape of community services would be ‘impossible’ to meet. ‘It won’t be only a handful of PCTs [who miss the deadline],’ he told PF.
PCTs face uncertainty over provision of their community services, amid mixed signals from ministers over how the NHS’s status as ‘preferred provider’ fits with its policy towards the private sector.
The Operating Framework said community services could be provided by PCTs, private firms, as a standalone foundation trust or integrated with other NHS organisations.
Stout said: ‘Some places already have quite well worked-up plans. But there will be problems in places... where the plans are no longer acceptable because the rules have changed.’ Other PCTs with no plans so far would have to work up proposals from ‘a standing start’.
‘Doing it in six weeks, I don’t think is possible,’ Stout said. ‘In some areas this will be a major problem.’
The British Medical Association’s London regional council this week criticised existing reorganisation plans, warning that proposals to centralise specialist services, coupled with policies to tackle the spending squeeze, could lead to ‘a record number’ of bed and hospital closures.
‘Given the scale of this problem, which NHS London has estimated as more than £5bn real-terms cuts by 2017, PCTs and trusts are being pressed to begin cutbacks now rather than delay.’
But the NHS in England got a thumbs up from the Nuffield Trust think-tank in research published on January 20.
This found that over the past ten years, productivity has been greater in the health service in England than in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although it receives less funding per head of population.
21 January 2010
NHS organisations are struggling to draw up plans for finance, contracted activity and the future shape of community services to meet severe deadlines imposed by the Department of Health.
The warning from health service leaders comes as the British Medical Association sounded the alarm over ‘record’ cuts and closures in London.
Chris Calkin, spokesman for the Healthcare Financial Management Association, told Public Finance that the tight timetable for drawing up plans and the contracts between trusts and primary care trusts was a ‘big concern’.
The NHS Operating Framework, published last month, says contracts must be agreed by March 1. But strategic health authorities – under pressure to provide financial plans to the DoH by January 29 – are seeking information from trusts urgently.
PCTs and trusts are hampered by the delay to the final NHS treatments tariff, which is not expected to be published before mid-February.
Calkin, who is also finance director at University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust, said: ‘We’ve got to get a plan in by Monday and without agreed contract levels for the next year and without the financial tariff, these plans are at best indicative.’
David Stout, director of the Primary Care Trust Network, warned that, for some PCTs, the deadline for agreeing the future shape of community services would be ‘impossible’ to meet. ‘It won’t be only a handful of PCTs [who miss the deadline],’ he told PF.
PCTs face uncertainty over provision of their community services, amid mixed signals from ministers over how the NHS’s status as ‘preferred provider’ fits with its policy towards the private sector.
The Operating Framework said community services could be provided by PCTs, private firms, as a standalone foundation trust or integrated with other NHS organisations.
Stout said: ‘Some places already have quite well worked-up plans. But there will be problems in places... where the plans are no longer acceptable because the rules have changed.’ Other PCTs with no plans so far would have to work up proposals from ‘a standing start’.
‘Doing it in six weeks, I don’t think is possible,’ Stout said. ‘In some areas this will be a major problem.’
The British Medical Association’s London regional council this week criticised existing reorganisation plans, warning that proposals to centralise specialist services, coupled with policies to tackle the spending squeeze, could lead to ‘a record number’ of bed and hospital closures.
‘Given the scale of this problem, which NHS London has estimated as more than £5bn real-terms cuts by 2017, PCTs and trusts are being pressed to begin cutbacks now rather than delay.’
But the NHS in England got a thumbs up from the Nuffield Trust think-tank in research published on January 20.
This found that over the past ten years, productivity has been greater in the health service in England than in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although it receives less funding per head of population.
