HOSPITAL managers are to shut an NHS accident and emergency department down at night in order to combat a staffing crisis, caused by the NHS being starved of cash by the Tories.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust said that closing the Grantham A&E rather than the departments at Lincoln County Hospital or Pilgrim Hospital in Boston was the ‘safest option’, despite the fact that the closure will definitely cost lives.
The trust spokesman said emergency departments at the hospital normally work based on having 15 consultants and 28 registrar or middle grade doctors. However, it currently has just 14 consultants – 10 of whom are locums – and 12 middle grades. The reason for this is that the NHS is being robbed by the Tories!
The proposed closure would be for three months initially, but locals are sure that once it is closed it will never be reopened, leaving the county’s two other A&E departments, at Lincoln County and Boston Pilgrim, to take the strain and the continuing financial crisis.
Meanwhile the NHS St Helens Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has proposed a temporary ban on non-vital operations, because it is running out of cash and is discussing suspending what it terms as ‘all non-essential hospital referrals’ for four months during the winter when flu and other dangerous epidemics are rife.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has called the move ‘unacceptable’, but has not pledged that it will take action to stop the closure.Dr Richard Vautrey, BMA GP committee deputy chair, said: ‘This is an unacceptable decision which highlights the incredible financial pressure facing general practice and its impact on patient care. It cannot be right that the public will be effectively denied access to healthcare because the local CCG has run out of money. . . This is yet another sign of how desperately under-funded the NHS now is and how the government need to step up their commitment to resolving this crisis.’
The CCG is also suggesting a two-year suspension of IVF services for people aged under 37 and stopping provision of gluten free foods and some over-the-counter medicines. However these two cases are just the tip of the iceberg! GP leaders are saying that they are being ‘excluded’ from discussions over vital new plans currently being drawn up by CCGs, hospital trusts and local authorities that could reshape general practice in their area.
The ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs)’ – which will map out the future health strategy of 44 regions across England – are in many cases being kept secret until they are finalised and approved by NHS England later in the autumn. Then they will be presented as accomplished facts, that are unchallengeable!
The reality is that plans are being made in secret to cut and close the NHS, and are to be kept secret until the day that they are to be announced! Many LMC (Local Medical Committee) leaders have told the Pulse GPs magazine they have not been shown the plans, despite the fact they were submitted to NHS England in June, and even those that have seen them said there has been no consultation.
The secrecy is being maintained, despite the brief from NHS senior managers setting out that these STPs are to detail plans for the ‘sustainability and quality’ of general practice, including ‘workforce and workload issues’. They are deciding the fate of the NHS in secret!
Birmingham LMC medical secretary Dr Robert Morley said: ‘The full plan has not been shared with the LMC, let alone have we been consulted. All this work is at an advanced stage of development and has been going on for months before it has been shared with general practice provider representatives.’ Londonwide LMCs said that in some cases GPs were being excluded from the process altogether.
The situation is that the refusal of PM May to dump Hunt meant not just business as usual but that the business of cutting and closing and then privatising the NHS has been stepped up to break the NHS up as the capitalist crisis deepens.
The time has come when the trade unions must act decisively to defend the NHS. This September’s TUC must carry a motion calling a general strike to bring down the Tories as the only way to save the NHS, the greatest gain of the working class, from complete destruction.
