Plans for improving care are being derailed by hospital deficits, GP leader warns

NHS transformation plans are being swept off course by acute care deficits that risk wasting the opportunity to improve patient services, doctors’ leaders have warned peers.

Royal college leaders warned that some health professionals working on sustainability and transformation plans (STPs)—the process for 44 areas in England to come up with proposals to improve health and save money (see http://bmj.co/stpMap)—are “blinkered” to long term change because of the severity of current financial problems among hospital trusts.

Representatives of several royal colleges appeared before the House of Lords’ NHS sustainability committee on 22 November to answer questions for the committee’s inquiry into the long term sustainability of the NHS.

Peers asked whether clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) were doing their job well enough to allow for …