Hospitals Will Be Unable To Fund Entire Departments, BMA Warns



NHS cuts and the drive for competition will leave hospitals unable to fund entire departments, the Chairman of the British Medical Association’s Consultants Committee has said.



In a speech to the BMA’s annual conference of hospital consultants, Dr Mark Porter warned that the rationing of services, along with reforms that would see NHS hospitals in England lose work to competitors, would result in many trusts being “unable to cover the costs of entire departments.”



He said hospital services considered to be of low value by commissioners, for example cataract surgery, were already being stopped or rationed in some areas. As well as this, the ‘Any Willing Provider’ policy would mean more services being transferred to the private sector, reducing funding for NHS hospitals, but leaving them with fixed costs.



“This is the true cost of shifting care from NHS hospitals into the community or to alternative providers,” Dr Porter said. “No savings are made for the NHS as a whole, but what is left behind can become a financially unviable remnant with a greater proportion of fixed costs.”



And he said that the cost of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was adding to the problem:
 “The situation gets even worse when one considers the toxic PFI legacy in the NHS – a legacy of modern facilities and buildings paid for by a completely inflexible fixed cost regime that will now undermine the viability of its own host. In some areas, the parasite will consume its host, and if that is not bad enough, one can foresee the government baling out the private financiers who have made so much from PFI.” 

Dr Porter said that the elements of the Bill that would increase competition would have “devastating consequences” in the long term, but the government was downplaying them: “It has been relentlessly presented to the public as a move to put NHS money into the hands of doctors to spend wisely for their patients. However, that is far from the whole truth. The truth is that this Bill aims to transform the NHS by making the development of a market in healthcare the most important priority in the NHS. And that truth is the reason the government has found itself having to ignore the advice of dozens of organisations, all saying that this is the wrong thing to do.

“In order for competition to be meaningful, it must be possible and accepted that some organisations will fail. Simple to understand, but devastating in its effects upon a cash-limited health service forcibly opened up to commercial competition.”

(BMcN/KMcA)