LABOUR and the RCN have reacted angrily to instruction from NHS bosses and regulators to impose a ‘headcount reduction’ to reduce their deficits for 2015-2016.
The order is contained in a letter Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA) sent on 15th January to every one of the 241 NHS trusts they supervise. This outlined the measures they needed to be taking to try and make their books balance.
It told trusts to dramatically reduce their ‘financial distress’ if they wanted to receive money from a £1.8bn bailout fund that becomes available in April and is aimed at finally stabilising NHS finances.
The letter, signed by the TDA deputy chief executive, Bob Alexander, and his Monitor counterpart, Stephen Hay, says: ‘We will be meeting a number of challenged providers this month to agree a set of actions, including headcount reduction, additional to the current plan, with the clear intention of improving the financial position of those individual providers.’
Shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander said: ‘At the last election, the Tories promised to ensure hospitals had enough staff to meet patient demand. Less than a year later they’re asking hospitals to draw up plans to reduce staff numbers.’
Royal College of Nursing director of policy Howard Catton warned: ‘Patients will suffer without the right number of skilled and experienced frontline staff in place.’
The decision taken by the Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA) comes almost three years after the UK’s cabinet ministers ordered hospitals to do the opposite.
Critics say the move could force the hospitals to shed thousands of staff to balance their books, leaving nurses and managers at the risk of being sacked. A letter to trust bosses signed by NHS Improvement chief executive Jim Mackey and Care Quality Commission chief inspector Professor Sir Mike Richards, also dated 15th January 2016, said ‘the size of this year’s provider sector deficit makes it clear that, collectively, we need to focus more on financial rigour as one of the routes to excellent quality. . .
‘We will also be sharing revised National Quality Board staffing guidance and a new metric looking at care hours per patient day that we will both use in looking at how trusts manage staffing resources.
‘One of NHS Improvement’s early priorities will be to work with organisations with large deficits to help them return to surplus. There is an incorrect assumption that this can only be done at the expense of quality.’
Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, for example, has been losing £1.2m a week during 2015-16 and could end the year £60m in deficit. St George’s hospital in south London is also expected to record a deficit of about £46.2m.
Meanwhile, some of the hospital trusts that are most in the red have been told to use ‘headcount reduction’ to reduce their deficit for 2015-16.
