Demise of the NHS

[Alan B]

Jeremy Cunt at it again.
The Mirror - 7 June 2017

NHS chiefs are told to secretly draw up more cuts - with wards, A&Es and funding of IVF at risk of being scrapped

Hospitals face further ward closures, job losses and axed operations after cash-strapped bosses were secretly ordered to draw up yet more cuts.

NHS chiefs have been warned to “think the unthinkable” in a bid to slash costs as the Tories continue their assault on health.

Proposed measures also include shutting A&Es, theatres and maternity units, scrapping funding for certain treatments such as IVF and drawing out waiting times for planned care.

The steps are being discussed privately by NHS England and NHS Improvement officials, with decisions expected after the election – according to Health Service Journal.
They include changes which are “normally avoided as they are too unpleasant, unpopular or controversial”, the magazine revealed. The cuts make a mockery of Theresa May’s pledge to protect the NHS with a cash injection of £8billion if re-elected.
Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth said: “We now know if the Tories stay in power we’ll see hospital wards closed, waiting times growing, treatments rationed and staff cut.

“The fact that NHS bosses have described this as the ‘most extreme and ­difficult NHS finance process they had ­experienced’ will make chilling reading for patients and their families who deserve the very best levels of care.

“Every single day the Tories are in power hospitals are being left to crumble, staff are being let down, waiting lists are growing and patients are being denied care.”

See also:
The Independent

[JimC]

No no, the NHS is just pining for the fjords...

[Brian Peacock]

More leaks...

Leak shows 'devastating' impact of planned NHS cuts in London

Patients will be denied treatment, waiting times for operations will lengthen and A&E and maternity units may be shut under secret NHS plans to impose unprecedented cuts to health spending in London.

According to an internal NHS document seen by the Guardian, doctors in five London boroughs will have to spend less on drugs, fewer patients will be referred to hospital and support for people with severe health needs will be cut as part of the plan.

It outlines the “difficult choices” NHS bosses nationally are forcing the 10 hospital trusts in north-central London to make in the next few months in order to plug a £183.1m gap in their finances.

he 31-page document was circulated among dozens of top NHS officials in the area on 25 May. It outlines how the “capped expenditure process” will hit the provision of NHS care to the 1.44 million people who live in the boroughs of Camden, Islington, Haringey, Barnet and Enfield.

It admits that pushing through such cutbacks will be unpopular and hard to explain – and result in poorer care. “We recognise that these choices may be difficult for a number of reasons [because they include] … options that impact on quality of care [and] options that would be difficult to implement,” it says.

The hospitals that have been told to implement draconian cost-cutting measures include some of the NHS’s best-known names, such as the Royal Free, University College London and Great Ormond Street children’s hospital. ...

...

Disclosure of the plans has sparked furious opposition. NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, said restricting care and closing hospital units was “neither realistic nor reasonable”.

Restricting care in the ways envisaged by NHSE and NHSI will have such a dramatic effect on patients that it threatens the NHS’s ability to treat illness in the way it has done since its creation in 1948, it added.

“Some of the proposals could challenge fundamental expectations shared by NHS staff and the public about what the health service is there to provide. We can not do that without a full and proper debate”, said Saffron Cordery, the organisation’s director of policy and strategy. ...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... -in-london

[Svartalf]

cut the tories, and their big bizness tax cuts...

[Scot Dutchy]

'The end is nigh'.

[Svartalf]

or not, if they cut the NHS, the tories face a revolution... and they already faced a half failure...

[cronus]

Tories know the clock is ticking. A demographic certainty that within five to ten years they'll be displaced and marginalised into oblivion via a Labour landslide. They are seeing how much damage they can do via a scorched earth policy of cuts, a smokescreen of destruction...burning the villages/NHS as they retreat from now on.

[Brian Peacock]

In 10 years time the majority of Conservative & Unionist Party members will be dead, leaving the organisation populated by little William Hague clones and paid-for lobbyists.