NHS: 22.9 Million A&E Patients Hurt by Cuts

When will it end? There is yet more depressing news from the British Medical Association about our NHS. The BMA has announced that the Conservative Party’s proposed cuts to the NHS could affect 22.9m patients from A&E closures alone.

Strung Out and Stale

Depending on who you ask, the Conservatives’ “STP” stands for Sustainability and Transformation Plans/ Programs/ or Partnerships but what it really means is cuts. STPs were introduced to figure out how the NHS can become sustainable over the next five years and they inevitably focus on slashing NHS finances and services.

The BMA has assessed cut proposals from the 44 STP areas in the country and has expressed concern about their effects. Eighteen of them downgrade or close A&E departments, which the BMA estimates could affect 22.9m patients.

Further community bed closures, acute bed closures and hospitals either closing or merging could affect 6.6m, 14.7m and 17.6m patients respectively.

Remarkably the news comes just weeks after the Tory general election manifesto promised to “retain the 95% A&E target” of seeing patients within four hours.

Approval Ratings Dive

A survey of BMA members in March 2017 found that STPs were supported by just 14.1% of doctors. A whopping 40.3% did not agree at all with their introduction and the remaining 45.6% were as yet unsure. This uncertainty had dropped from 64.1% in November 2016 while the number supporting STPs had remained the same.

The BMA’s biggest areas for concern are that engagement with clinicians, patients and the public about the proposals hasn’t been good enough and the upfront funding needed hasn’t been provided. There are also questions about the timings placed on STP results, with many feeling the looming deadlines will rush important, life-threatening decisions.

Five years is a short time when threats of service-wide overhaul and restructure are bandied about. The BMA raised the point that some areas are “still questioning what an STP really means” while 22.9m lives could be altered across the country.

Spending “to Save”

Adding insult to potentially life-threatening injury, a BMA News investigation revealed that “despite funding on the frontline being scarcer than ever before” the 150 new jobs created by and for STP health leaders have annual salaries of at least £8.5m.

Some leaders pushing the STP proposals have used existing resources but many haven’t and London is particularly guilty. The investigation found that the North East London STP has employed 37 staff, created entire project management teams and appointed “swathes of analysts, press officers, and program directors”.

Many of these come from external private agencies, stoking fears that the Tories are slowly privatising the health service. The BMA discovered that the North Central London STP hired an external finance advisor at the rate of £1,500 a day. This part-time job cost taxpayers £199,000. Spending a combined £8.5m on private NHS bureaucrats so they can cut frontline jobs and patient care? The Thatcher-in-the-Rye PM strikes again.

The only silver lining in this study’s findings is that we can finally clear up the acronym ambiguity; STP seems to stand for “Self-serving Tory Plot”.

 

by Jo Davey

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