{"id":10612,"date":"2016-11-17T14:54:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T14:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=10612"},"modified":"2016-11-17T14:54:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T14:54:09","slug":"cash-not-secret-reforms-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=10612","title":{"rendered":"Cash not secret reforms call"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Frontline staff and patients are being left out of secret plans to shrink NHS services and cut costs, a new report has warned.<\/p>\n

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An investigation<\/a> by the King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fund think tank shows that NHS England has told local health authorities to keep their Sustainability and Transformation Plans<\/a> (STPs) under wraps from the public and the media until they have been finalised and approved.<\/p>\n

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NHS England has even instructed officials not to grant access to STPs, which could lead to the closure of A&E departments and hospitals, under Freedom of Information laws.<\/p>\n

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The report said the speed at which STPs have been rushed through has excluded doctors, service users and the public from being involved.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is clear from our research that STPs have been developed at significant speed and without the meaningful involvement of frontline staff or the patients they serve,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 the report said.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bPatients and the public have been largely absent from the STP process so far.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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One local health manager involved in the development of an STP commented, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI’ve been in meetings where I’ve felt a little bit like, you know, ‘where are the real people in this?’.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0098Ludicrous\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another described the secrecy ordered by NHS England as “ludicrous”.<\/p>\n

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The report also highlighted the issue of local health authorities being forced into secrecy.<\/p>\n

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It said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bAs well as the timeline creating a barrier to meaningful public engagement, national NHS bodies had also asked STP leaders to keep details of draft STPs out of the public domain.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis included instructions to actively reject Freedom of Information Act requests to see draft plans. Two main reasons were given for this.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe first was that national NHS leaders wanted to be able to ‘manage’ the STP narrative at a national level – particularly where plans might involve politically-sensitive changes to hospital services.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe second was that national leaders did not want draft proposals to be made public until they had agreed on their content.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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A number of local authorities have gone against NHS England\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s orders and published their STPs, which proposed hospital, A&E and maternity unit closures, as well as the merging of services.<\/p>\n

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Slash, trash, privatise <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

While the government is insisting that STPs – which will be enacted throughout England to reduce a record \u00c2\u01412.45bn NHS<\/a> deficit – will help improve services, Unite says their real aim is to \u00e2\u20ac\u015bslash, trash and privatise\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.<\/p>\n

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Unite national officer for health, Sarah Carpenter said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhat the NHS needs are not more secretive \u00e2\u20ac\u0098reforms\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, but a massive injection of \u00e2\u20ac\u0098new\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 money when chancellor Philip Hammond \u00e2\u20ac\u0098resets\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the economy in his autumn statement on November 23.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe also need more openness about STPs as they appear, under the mantle of improved services, to mask a culture of cuts. Unite will be writing to all councils to ask them to publish the STPs for their respective areas as a matter of priority and not sign them off without full consultation with staff, the trade unions and the public.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frontline staff and patients are being left out of secret plans to shrink NHS services and cut costs, a new report has warned.   An investigation by the King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fund think tank shows that NHS England has told local health authorities to keep their Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) under wraps from the public and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[29,632],"wps_subtitle":"NHS: Staff and patients excluded from cuts plans","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10613,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10612\/revisions\/10613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}