FINANCIAL pressures could get in the way of the drive to improve care following the Stafford Hospital scandal, experts said yesterday, confirming the obvious, that the £20bn cuts in the NHS currently taking place have had a massive impact on both staff and patients, hitting both hard.
Figures released last week showed nearly one in three NHS trusts is forecasting a deficit this year, because of the coalition’s savage cuts regime.
Now a review by the Nuffield Trust – published a year on from the Stafford public inquiry – echoes the warning that was given by inquiry chief Robert Francis.
Francis criticised what he saw as the ‘oppressive reactions’ of the system to hospitals that ran into trouble with budgets and hitting targets.
Commenting on the Nuffield report, Francis said that hospital leaders needed to be ‘frank’ about whether they could provide high-quality care with current levels of funding.
‘It is unacceptable to pretend that all can be provided to an acceptable standard when that is not true,’ he added.
The answer of the Tories to this contradiction will be to shut more hospitals and bring care into line with the savagely cut funding that they are prepared to provide.
Francis was responding to a report by the Nuffield Trust based on in-depth interviews with 50 staff at five hospitals and online feedback from chairs and chief executives of 53 others.
However, as is well known, the many deaths at the Stafford Hospital were caused by huge financial cuts that were made by the management so that the hospital could qualify for the Foundation Trust status that was introduced by a Labour government, as a step to privatisation.
The Stafford cuts killed many people and took place after the sacking of key medical staff and by getting other staff to perform treatments that they were not trained to carry out.
Julie Bailey, founder of Cure the NHS, the campaign group that led the calls for the public inquiry, said she was disappointed the government had not agreed to full regulation of healthcare assistants, as the Francis Inquiry had recommended.
She was pleased with the progress being made, saying that ‘Things are moving in the right direction. I believe people working in the NHS have a real appetite for change.’
The problem, however, is not the people who work in the NHS, but the financial crisis that has been imposed on the NHS by the coalition government.
The coalition will respond to the suggestion that ‘it is unacceptable to pretend that all can be provided to an acceptable standard when that is not true’ by further cutting and closing the NHS.
It will say that it is the NHS with its axiom of free healthcare for all at the point of need that is the pretence that has got to be put an end to, by closing A&Es and entire hospitals, charging an admission fee for those A&Es that remain, and driving forward NHS privatisation, with private insurance for ‘unaffordable treatments’.
Hunt is already presiding over the closure of huge chunks of the NHS, including vital A&E units.
He was so disappointed at the judiciary stopping the closure of the Lewisham A&E that he is currently amending parliamentary legislation so that he will be allowed to close NHS units at will, to balance the NHS books, and put an end to the ‘pretence’ of free treatment for all at the point of need.
Already, many A&E units such as at Chase Farm have been closed, with at least one tragic death as a result.
The issue is clear. Public healthcare requires the NHS and its continuation as a free health service providing all needed treatment free at the point of need.
If capitalism cannot provide this basic human right, it is the capitalist system that must go, not the NHS.
In fact, the trade unions must act to defend the NHS. They must demand the reopening of all closed NHS units, occupy hospitals to prevent their closure and call a general strike to bring down the coalition.
The answer to the NHS crisis is to put an end to the system that is causing it and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
