Post by kickingfrog on Apr 23, 2017 19:38:41 GMT
The Sustainability and Transformation Plans: a critical assessment
John Lister
....At the end of the day, when the innovations in STPs don’t deliver savings for the NHS, NHS England will again resort to cuts and rationing. Indeed many knowledgeable people see the STPs as a smokescreen to divert attention from cuts at trust level, whittling away staffing levels, imposing smaller-scale service reorganisations, and preparing to push through controversial closures on ‘safety’ grounds (as has happened in Grantham and Chorley and is increasingly on the cards in Ealing).
Up to half of most STPs’ planned savings are in any case to be squeezed out of the hospital sector, through ever more relentless ‘efficiency savings’ and reductions in staffing levels, along with closures of beds, services and even whole hospitals. With no alternative services in place, and no capital available to build new or extend existing hospitals, and with even community hospital beds and staff facing cuts, it is a recipe for a chronically under-resourced, chaotic and scandal-prone NHS.
Promoting STPs may seem an easier course of action for NHS England than to warn Mrs May that if the cash freeze begun in 2010 is extended to 2020/21, many services will collapse. We know that Simon Stevens’ effort to do this after she became Prime Minister was met with a frosty reception. But STPs cannot solve the problem of inadequate funding. Ministers will have to fund the NHS properly or take political responsibility for its collapse.
This paper was first published by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest.......
chpi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/The-Sustainability-and-Transformation-Plans-a-critical-assessment-FINAL-WEB.pdf
www.sochealth.co.uk/2017/01/30/sustainability-transformation-plans-critical-assessment/
John Lister
....At the end of the day, when the innovations in STPs don’t deliver savings for the NHS, NHS England will again resort to cuts and rationing. Indeed many knowledgeable people see the STPs as a smokescreen to divert attention from cuts at trust level, whittling away staffing levels, imposing smaller-scale service reorganisations, and preparing to push through controversial closures on ‘safety’ grounds (as has happened in Grantham and Chorley and is increasingly on the cards in Ealing).
Up to half of most STPs’ planned savings are in any case to be squeezed out of the hospital sector, through ever more relentless ‘efficiency savings’ and reductions in staffing levels, along with closures of beds, services and even whole hospitals. With no alternative services in place, and no capital available to build new or extend existing hospitals, and with even community hospital beds and staff facing cuts, it is a recipe for a chronically under-resourced, chaotic and scandal-prone NHS.
Promoting STPs may seem an easier course of action for NHS England than to warn Mrs May that if the cash freeze begun in 2010 is extended to 2020/21, many services will collapse. We know that Simon Stevens’ effort to do this after she became Prime Minister was met with a frosty reception. But STPs cannot solve the problem of inadequate funding. Ministers will have to fund the NHS properly or take political responsibility for its collapse.
This paper was first published by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest.......
chpi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/The-Sustainability-and-Transformation-Plans-a-critical-assessment-FINAL-WEB.pdf
www.sochealth.co.uk/2017/01/30/sustainability-transformation-plans-critical-assessment/