SECRET CUTS TO OUR NHS

Dear Supporter,

First, Happy New Year to our supporters. It's been a very busy start to what is going to be a very active year in support of our NHS. Following the very successful meeting organised by H&F in December - thanks to all who came! - campaigners from Brent have extracted secret information from local NHS bosses using a Freedom of Information request. What we have learned is not reassuring about plans for OUR NHS. As we said in our press release:

Secret Plan to cut almost 8,000 NHS jobs and slash services in NW London.

Plans to slash NHS jobs and services have been developed in secret by NHS bureaucrats and only been uncovered thanks to a Freedom of Information request by a Brent health campaigner.

This revealed the NW London Delivery Plan for the STP Oct 16 labelled "strictly confidential not for wider circulation" and unseen even by some of the councils involved.

The plans include

The loss of 3,658 NHS jobs in NW London next year 17/18 - rising to 7753 job losses by 20/21
Almost 50,000 planned admissions and 222,370 outpatient appointments cut by 20/21. Already patient waiting times for planned operations are at record levels - these plans will only make things much, much worse.
The loss of 500 - 600 hospital beds with the closure of Charing Cross and Ealing as major acute hospitals
A reduction in A&E attendances by 64175 in the next 5 years.

More very ill patients have arrived at the remaining A&Es in NW London this year than ever before - there is NO evidence that there will not be a need for these departments and acute beds in the future. Merril Hammer, Chair of Save Our Hospitals, said ‘These plans threaten patients' lives. We need more beds and more staff, not ongoing cuts.’

The cost of planning this massive cuts and closure programme is spiralling out of control with many millions pocketed by private management consultants.

Faced with this crazy set of damaging proposals for NW London's health services it's no wonder Tracey Batten Chief Executive of Imperial NHS Trust (and the highest paid NHS CEO in London) resigned yesterday. Dr Batten is leaving her £340k job at Imperial to return to Australia. Imperial controls 5 hospitals across NW London. As Merril Hammer also said ‘Our campaign fears that Imperial management will spend months looking for a new CEO when they should be tackling the unprecedented A&E, bed capacity and treatment crises.’

Already, this has been picked up by Ross Lydall and used in the Evening Standard:
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/boss-of-london-hospital-trust-featured-in-cancelled-operations-documentary-to-quit-a3451621.html

HOSPITAL STAFF WORKING FLAT-OUT

Supporters watching the BBC's documentary, HOSPITAL, will have seen Imperial Trust's staff working under almost unbearable pressure. At the Imperial Board meeting last week some of the key facts behind this pressure were revealed by clinical managers. Patients coming to A&E were waiting for hours to see doctors yet, as Prof. Tim Orchard, Director for Medicine and Integrated Care at Imperial, eloquently pointed out 'Patients who are coming in the the A&E need to be there. They have real conditions. They're often elderly. They need beds for several days. The trouble is, there are not sufficient beds.'

And another medical director pointed out that Imperial is falling way behind treatment targets in orthopaedics. The difficulty, he explained, is that need is rising but facilities are not expanding to meet genuine patient need. He also reported that many patients, offered private treatment, refuse because the private companies only treat simple conditions. This private treatment is paid for by the NHS and is therefore a loss of revenue to the NHS.

It is clear that inadequate funding and understaffing are putting patient health at risk.

WE ALSO NEED MORE NHS AMBULANCES

Tom, pictured above, gave a dismaying account of how he had suffered from lack of adequate ambulance provision following an accident recently. (He has provided SOH with photo and details.)

He fell off his bike, on black ice, rang emergency services but was left waiting on the side of the road before an NHS ambulance arrived. He was given some help by the crew of a passing private ambulance, but they did not have the appropriate training to treat him fully. When, eventually, the NHS ambulance arrived, Tom had a long trip to an Urgent Care Centre and then another long wait before being transferred to an appropriate acute A&E where his wounds were dressed publicly in a overcrowded waiting room.

PATIENTS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO SUFFER LIKE THIS! It is undercapacity in both hospitals and the ambulance service that leads to this poor treatment.

MARCH FOR THE NHS ON 4TH MARCH

JOIN SAVE OUR HOSPITALS

11.00am  at Lyric Square - or from 12pm Tavistock Square, WC1

This is promising to be a massive demonstration in defence of our NHS. We urge all our supporters to attend if at all possible.

Can you help publicise the demo? We need your support to distribute leaflets as widely as possible. If you can help in your area, please contact us on SCH&X@gmail.com

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Monday 30th January     5-7pm Healthwatch St Pauls Hammersmith. We will be leafleting from 4.45 with details of the demo.

SATURDAY 4TH FEBRUARY   2-4pm SPECIAL STALL LYRIC SQ.  Valentine's Day special - come and sign our We Love the NHS Valentine's card and publicise the demo.

Wednesday 8th February  7.30pm Hammersmith Town Hall. SOH organising meeting. All welcome.

Saturday 11th February 2-4pm Stall at Charing Cross Hospital and Welcome to Unite the Community NHS bus. A good crowd would be good fun!

Tuesday 14th February   12-2pm Charing Cross Hospital - stall and presentation of Valentine's Card to Charing Cross hospital

Wednesday 15th February  EALING PUBLIC MEETING - 7 - 9 pm Ealing Town Hall - Debate on Health Provision. Come and Support Ealing and H&F Councils in not signing up to closures of hospitals. (see www.ealingsaveournhs.org.uk )




Best wishes,

Merril
Chair SOH

London health chiefs facing A&E crisis spend £2.3m on management consultants

Health chiefs in a part of London where hospitals have run out of beds this winter have spent £2.3 million on management consultants, it can be revealed.

The 19 contracts include six-figure payments to firms including McKinsey and Deloitte at a time when an estimated £876 million needs to be cut from the NHS in five north London boroughs.

Two of the area’s hospitals, the Whittington in Archway and North Middlesex in Edmonton, have not had a single spare bed on numerous occasions since the start of the year due to unprecedented winter pressures, NHS England figures show.

The consultants were hired to draw up the sustainability and transformation plan [STP] for North Central London, which covers Islington, Camden, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. This blueprint outlines how services should be pared back to cope with dwindling resources for the health service.

A freedom of information response to the British Medical Association revealed that one firm, Methods Advisory, was paid £617,850 in the year to last November for “programme management and strategy support”.

McKinsey was paid £360,000 for proposals to change mental health services. Deloitte received £267,336 for finance modelling and “development of governance models”. Carnall Farrar, a management consultancy run by former NHS London chief executive Dame Ruth Carnall, was paid £115,882 for a review of “commissioning arrangements”.

Dr Farah Jameel, a Camden GP and chair of the borough’s local medical committee, described the expenditure on consultants as “shocking, disgusting, appalling and ultimately not surprising”. She said: “We are in the midst of a winter crisis. These monies would be much better spent on frontline services like A&Es and general practice.”

BMA council chair Dr Mark Porter said “every penny” of NHS cash was vital at a time when hospitals were in “crisis” due to the collapse of social care. He questioned how many proposals within the “vast, bewildering” STP plans would come to fruition.

He added: “Doctors will find it galling to see that so much vital resource has been handed to consultancy firms for their part in plans which, ultimately, may never come to fruition.”

The Standard revealed last year that the five STPs in London aim to axe £4.5 billion from the capital’s health services by 2020.

The North Central London STP warns of a shortage of GPs and A&E consultants and missed opportunities to detect cancer early due to the “huge shortfall” in diagnostic equipment. It said that action was needed to address the increased demands from an ageing and growing population. 

David Stout, programme director for North Central London STP, said: “The use of management consultants to support strategy development is usual across the NHS. Unlike some other STPs across the country, there has been no recent history of strategy development for health and care services across North Central London. 

“The level of spending on consultancy and project management reflects the need to develop the plans at speed. We expect the level of consultancy spend on the STP to reduce in future years.”

ROSS LYDALL

Evening Standard

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/london-health-chiefs-facing-ae-crisis-spend-23m-on-management-consultants-a3450476.html

Private firms receive £2.3m to draw up STP plans

Private firms have been paid a ‘shocking’ £2.3m to draw up controversial plans which will cut health and social care spending by more than £1bn in a part of London.

According to health leaders drawing up the North Central London STP (sustainability and transformation plan), six-figure sums were paid to eight different companies – including accountants Deloitte and management consultants McKinsey – for services stretching from ‘administrative support’ and ‘financial modelling’ to ‘communications support’.

A firm called Consultants Methods Advisory Ltd, which describes itself as ‘shaping public services for the digital age’, racked up the biggest costs, invoicing £617,850 for ‘programme management office and strategy support’.

Doctors leaders described the figures as ‘appalling’.

BMA council chair Mark Porter said: ‘While hospitals fall into crisis, social care hits rock bottom and the Government blames hard-working GPs for its political choice to underfund the NHS, every penny of health service money becomes more desperately valuable and doctors will find it galling to see that so much vital resource has been handed to consultancy firms for their part in failing plans which, ultimately, may never come to fruition, while frontline staff struggle to provide safe patient care in a service increasingly becoming unfit for purpose.’

Pick and choose

BMA News analysis last year revealed that the STP process – which has seen England divided into 44 ‘footprint’ areas, with each asked to produce a plan to integrate and transform local services – will need to cut some £26bn from their budgets by 2021.

And in December an NHS Improvement board paper revealed that only projects which were ‘shovel ready’ would be likely to be funded – with capital resource too tight to pay for all the projects.

Dr Porter added: ‘NHS Improvement has admitted that it will pick and choose the parts of these vast, bewildering plans it can actually put into action and, as such, it leads me to question whether all of this money handed out to private companies will be completely wasted – yet another example of vital resource being frittered away in a health service devoid of direction and leadership and lurching from one unnecessary crisis to another.’

The North Central London STP – and its final iteration: a 68-page word document in PDF format – aims to combine ‘radical service transformation and incremental improvements’. It reveals that the area faces a funding shortfall of £1.2bn in 2020/21 if spending and funding levels continue as expected.

In the plan, health leaders admit to ‘not having all the answers’ and still expects its NHS organisations to be in the red by £75m in five years – even after all the cuts.

'Shocking, disgusting and appalling'

Camden GP and local medical committee chair Farah Jameel said: 'As a practising GP struggling to meet patient needs with ever tighter resources, the words that come to mind when presented with these financial figures are shocking, disgusting, appalling and ultimately not surprising.

'The Government should be held accountable for allowing this inappropriate use of funds and be encouraged to focus attention on addressing the very real challenges affecting those who work in and rely on the NHS.

'We are in the midst of a winter crisis, the NHS has systematically been stripped of much needed resources translating into services performing under extreme pressure and stress, in this context these monies would be much better spent on frontline services like A&E's and General Practice.

'I remain acutely aware of the Government's agenda to transform and reconfigure services to better suit the needs of the population within the constraints of a shrinking financial envelope.

'With that in mind the absence of strong clinical input regarding service capacity and patient need in the planning process is frankly disappointing, especially given the large figures of tax payers' money involved.'

A new norm?

In total 17 different firms were paid for their involvement in putting together the STP.

McKinsey and Company were given £360,000 for ‘strategy assessment’ and ‘financial modelling’ particularly related to mental health services and initiatives.

Deloitte LLP was given £257,336 for ‘finance and activity modelling’.

And recruitment specialists Hunter Healthcare Resourcing charged £282,518 for administrative support.

Methods Advisory Ltd did not respond to BMA News’ request for comment. But a column on its website said: ‘We have worked in health and care for over 25 years, with all its incarnations and ambitions.

'This gives us the ability to know what has worked (or not) before, alongside knowing what the potential… [to be] the "new normal” in health and care.’

Leaked costs

The revelations come months after a letter was leaked to the BBC revealing the cost of external providers to an STP in Cheshire and Merseyside.

PricewaterhouseCoopers were paid £300,000 – less than a seventh of the total cost in North Central London – to help draw up the Cheshire and Merseyside STP, a plan which requires savings of £999m within five years.

Explaining the costs, Louise Shepherd, lead for the Cheshire and Merseyside STP, said: ‘This is to provide additional capacity and expertise to help and support our clinicians and managers design our future care models while still delivering a very challenging “day job”.’

NHS Improvement and the North Central STP lead have been contacted for comment.

The North Central London patch includes: Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust; Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust; Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust; Central London Community Health Care NHS Trust; Great Ormond Street Hospital; Moorfields Eye Hospital; North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust; Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust; Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital; Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust; University College London; and Whittington Hospital.

Transfer of care delays threaten to capsize the NHS

Find out more about STPs

Read the figures in full

Read more from Peter Blackburn and follow on Twitter.

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England

Created: 19 January 2017 by Peter Blackburn

​BMA​

https://www.bma.org.uk/news/2017/january/private-firms-receive-two-point-three-million-to-draw-up-stp#.WIONToSCYWA.twitter

Campaigners slam 'foolish' plans for NHS

https://www.londonnewsonline.co.uk/15219/pressure-builds-stretched-aes-patient-numbers-soar/

Hospital staff asked to increase discharges by 30% more than normal due to winter pressures
https://www.londonnewsonline.co.uk/15219/pressure-builds-stretched-aes-patient-numbers-soar/

Fifty-two NHS hospitals sent patients elsewhere in busiest week yet

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/20/fifty-two-nhs-hospitals-send-patients-elsewhere-in-busiest-week

Record number of NHS hospitals on major alert
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/record-number-of-nhs-hospitals-on-major-alert-a3445686.html

Hundreds of beds set to go in major hospital shake-up
http://www.banburycake.co.uk/news/15030283.Hundreds_of_beds_set_to_go_in_major_hospital_shake_up/?ref=twtrec

Jeremy Hunt is pursuing an agenda for the NHS that 'will cost many, many lives'
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-hunt-pursuing-agenda-nhs-9660916

The BMA responds to Prime Minister Theresa May, who demanded that GPs extend their opening hours to provide care seven days a week to alleviate pressure on emergency departments or lose funding.
https://www.bma.org.uk/collective-voice/influence/key-negotiations/nhs-funding/our-response-to-theresa-may-about-the-nhs-crisis?winst=1484682005840&of=0#.WH6RjwULg60.twitter

The NHS’s winter crisis
http://moneyweek.com/the-nhs-winter-crisis/

Protestors march in Brighton in support of NHS funding
http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2017-01-21/protestors-march-in-brighton-in-support-of-nhs-funding/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-38704298

Watch second episode of 'Hospital' here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bgtw8

Dr Ranj Singh asks if we are creating a two-tier health system
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088p2n5

Nurse's harrowing account of life in A&E​

"I really struggle when management comment and they ask how many hours will the patient be alive for... because we need the bed."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04q6s6f

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38710217

BMA: STPs lack meaningful transformation other than ‘drastic’ service closures

STPs put the NHS at risk of drastic service closures, Dr Mark Porter, chair of the BMA, has said as he warned that the NHS needs an urgent funding increase to continue operating.

In his New Year’s Message, Dr Porter stated that ‘post-truth’ politics are infecting the NHS, with the government in denial of the “obvious” funding deficit.

Oxford Dictionaries chose ‘post-truth’, defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’ as its Word of the Year 2016, following the EU referendum and the election of Donald Trump as US president.

Dr Porter said that STPs, proffered as the solution to the NHS deficit, had “revealed a health service that is in fact unsustainable without urgent further investment, and with little capacity to ‘transform’ in any meaningful way other than by closing services on a drastic scale”.

The South West London and Lincolnshire STPs are among those containing plans to close local hospitals. NHS Improvement has also already warned that the requests for new capital in the STPs ‘exceed what is available’.

Dr Porter explained that the BMA considered that the draft STPs failed to meet its objectives of being realistic and properly funded and prioritising patient care, and predicted that they would lead to £26bn health and social care cuts.

He added: “STPs are meant to bring health and social care together, and in a grim kind of way they do. It is clear from many STPs that each is desperately trying to prop up the other, their crutches cracking under the weight.”

Dr Porter cited the rise in delayed transfers of care as an example of the growing and inter-related problems in health and social care.

He urged the government to accept that it will “get the health service it is willing to pay for”, and avoid damaging NHS workforce morale by ignoring their concerns.

The latest Autumn Statement was widely criticised for ignoring pleas for more health and care funding.

Dr Porter also accused health secretary Jeremy Hunt of an “unprecedented” squandering of goodwill by imposing an unpopular contract on junior doctors, and overlooking the contribution the health service’s “wonderful diversity” brings by promising to make the NHS self-sufficient in doctors.

http://www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/Health-Care-News/bma-stps-lack-meaningful-transformation-other-than-drastic-service-closures

03.01.17

Crutches Cracking

British Medical Association's 2017 Message

Dr Mark Porter leader of the BMA gave a grim New Year message to the NHS saying Sustainability & Transformation Plans had  “revealed a health service that is in fact unsustainable without urgent further investment, and with little capacity to ‘transform’ in any meaningful way other than by closing services on a drastic scale”. He explained that the BMA considered that the draft STPs failed to meet its objectives of being realistic and properly funded and prioritising patient care, and predicted that they would lead to £26bn health and social care cuts. He added: “STPs are meant to bring health and social care together, and in a grim kind of way they do. It is clear from many STPs that each is desperately trying to prop up the other, their crutches cracking under the weight.” NHS Improvement has also already warned that the requests for new capital in the STPs "exceed what is available". BMA: STPs lack meaningful transformation other than 'drastic' service ...

Save Our Hospitals Saturday Stall & Brainstorm

SOH will be delivering its own New Year Message to the people of Fulham on the first SOH stall of 2017 - we'll be going to a nearby café afterwards to informally brainstorm campaign ideas, feel free to join us for all or part of the afternoon..

SOH Saturday Stall Sat 21st Jan  2 - 4pm North End Rd St John's Church  (southern end of North End Rd - facing the market on the paved area behind the church)

Insight into Hospital Crisis

For a powerful insight into the consequences of NHS underfunding check out the compelling TV documentary series, Hospital filmed at St Mary's and Charing Cross. So far looks like Imperial's subtle and compelling way of making the case for more resources for the NHS. Hospital, Episode 1: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b088rp75 - talking of media did you catch SOH press officer Jim on ITV condemning NHS cuts this week?

London Keep Our NHS Public Meeting

There's an opportunity to exchange news with campaigners from across London at this LKONP forum where the STPs and the NHS demo on 4th March will be discussed.

LKONP Tues 24th Jan 7pm Camden Town Hall Judd Street WC1H 9JE (nearest tubes Kings X or Euston)

Imperial NHS Board Meeting

We have the chance to congratulate Imperial on the TV series - and challenge them over hospital closure plans -  at their board meeting where questions from the public are allowed at the end. (Papers not yet published)

Imperial Board Meeting Wed 25th Jan 11.30 - 1 New Boardroom CX Hospital

Good to talk

Merril did a very successful briefing on the STPs to London Green party members last week

Anne & Gurj spoke against supporting the STP in a debate for Brent Central Labour party General Committee - vote unanimous

If your group would like a speaker please let us know. Equally if you've got some local health news / event do let us know., we'd be happy to publicise

Regards,
Anne Drinkell(SOH secretary)