BMJ  2006;333:1142 (2 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39044.677280.DB

News

Feeling the squeeze

Lisa Hitchen

1 London

The health secretary Patricia Hewitt says that NHS deficits have risen because trusts have recruited too many doctors. Lisa Hitchen says the reasons are more complex and the consequences are becoming serious

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Pressure on UK health trusts to break even by the end of the financial year, in the face of a projected NHS deficit of £1.2bn ({euro}1.8bn; $2.3bn), is forcing managers to take tough decisions.

A report of six month performance statistics, released last month for 2006-7, shows that 175 organisations are predicting deficits, with half of the gross deficit concentrated in 6% of organisations.

Because hospital trusts can no longer carry their debt over from one year to the next, they have been considering laying off staff and closing departments throughout the country. And GPs in many areas have been told that they must substantially cut the number of referrals to hospital.

This has prompted the Department of Health to start monitoring redundancies. It recently reported 903 compulsory redundancies in the first half of this year. Of these, 167 (18%) were clinical staff. "There will be further redundancies over . . . [Full text of this article]


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Rapid Responses:

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Feeling the squeeze: a patient's view
Peter M Lapsley
bmj.com, 4 Dec 2006 [Full text]
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