Dr Mary Archer chairs Addenbrooke’s Hospital
Best not to move to the Cambridge area if you have an illness, and goodness knows how incumbent residents will cope as GPs in the area have been told to send fewer people to hospital and use cheaper drugs.
It follows £28 million cuts to the health service as Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire Primary Care Trusts struggle with predicted debts of £45.9 million over the next year.
Addenbrooke’s Hospital, whose chairman is the fragrant Dr Mary Archer, will have to save £15 million by treating fewer patients. The local Arthur Rank hospice is set to axe its home serice and faces cutbacks of £400,000.
GPs will be expected to save £5.4 million by referring fewer patients to hospitals and cutting back on drugs.
My former GP Pam Kenny warned that GPs could be held negligent if they were forced to reduce referrals. She stated the obvious, that GPs only refer patients to hospital if there is a good reason anyway.
I’m wondering if this will cause a flood of patients seeking treatment abroad and then billing their health authority.
So I advise you to avoid moving to this area if you have an illness; the housing is grossly expensive anyway.
Update: Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt told a Cambridge Evening News journalist that the cuts would benefit patients and be good news.
And we were told that the budget crisis would not effect patient care. Fiddlesticks!
p.s NE Herts health authority is cutting 10% of its workforce…
Public hospital waiting lists here are just insane. Many are now going to parts of Asia to have operations etc. Sad thing is many are finding themselves in the poo because of infections they develop when they get back here. Dental work is also being sourced in Asia, as it’s much cheaper and the waiting virtually non existant. Again, the risk of infection is quite huge.
I hope one or other of the independent healthcare think-tanks will illuminate why some NHS trusts have developed such relatively large deficit positions while others haven’t. London – where I live – is not in any position to discourage settlers. Fortunately, local NHS trusts in SW London have either significantly smaller deficts than Cambridge or small surpluses. Why the difference?
Michelle, It sounds like the situation is very bad in your country and I am very sorry for desperate patients who spend their time and money on travelling to Asia and return home with infections.
Bob B, This link has the answer to your question, it seems to be as a result of mismanagement by government or bad management by PCTs : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4899632.stm
A key point in your link is surely that “pay rises for GPs, hospital consultants and nurses have cost much more than expected. The King’s Fund health think-tank believes there is something in this, claiming 40% of the extra money being pumped in to the NHS is going on wage hikes.”
Yes – and Department of Health and treasury ministers must take full responsibility for insisting on central negotiations for NHS pay but that factor alone doesn’t explain why a third of NHS trusts are in deficit while others aren’t. Is it just a coincidence that Cambridge and Oxford trusts have relatively large deficits while my local NHS trusts in London don’t?
Btw readers can find out about the state of the finances of their local NHS trusts by entering their post code in this useful link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/health/06/nhs_finance/html/
Btw btw London housing is famously expensive too but that isn’t stopping folks from coming and settling here. From before WW2 until the 1980s, London’s population was in decline but it has been growing since. Nowadays, about a quarter of London’s population wasn’t born in the UK – no other UK region comes close to that.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/born_abroad/around_britain/html/overview.stm
Of course, one reason for that could be that according to Eurostat figures, in terms of per capita GDP, inner London is the most affluent region in Europe by a margin: “GDP per capita in 2002 ranged from 32% of the EU25 in Lubelskie to 315% in inner London”
In 1847 Disraeli wrote: London is the modern Babylon.
well at least if you have an accident you can get an amulance to take you there. It seems a bit of a scandal that Addenbrookes doesnt have a helipad for emergency cases from the sticks.