{"id":6244,"date":"2015-10-12T17:13:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T16:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=6244"},"modified":"2015-10-12T17:13:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T16:13:46","slug":"nhs-deficit-balloons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=6244","title":{"rendered":"NHS: deficit balloons"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The National Health Service\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deficit has ballooned to nearly \u00c2\u01411bn in the first three months of the year, figures released on Friday (October 9) revealed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sparking what experts have called the worst financial crisis for the NHS in a generation.<\/p>\n

 
\nFigures released by the health service\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s financial regulator Monitor found that NHS Foundation Trusts in England overspent by \u00c2\u0141455m between January and March of this year, while NHS Trusts amassed a \u00c2\u0141485m deficit over the same period \u00e2\u20ac\u201c totalling \u00c2\u0141930m.<\/p>\n

 
\nIt has been estimated that the deficit could reach \u00c2\u01412bn by the end of the financial year.<\/p>\n

 
\nMonitor pointed to the skyrocketing cost of agency staff as a main driver pushing the deficit out of control. Unite head of health Barrie Brown agreed.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe use of agency staff is caused by a recruitment crisis, especially for nurses,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Brown said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis has not been helped by low or non-existent pay awards in recent years which have contributed to a massive exit of staff; the ambulance service being a good example of staff leaving in large numbers.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe steps already taken to curb the ballooning bill for agency staff needs to be accelerated,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThere needs to be much better workforce planning.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nIn June, the health secretary Jeremy Hunt announced measures that aim to rein in the agency staff bill, but Brown noted at the time that Hunt had failed to address the soaring bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s root causes.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAs a supporter of the free market, does he not realise that the charges made by the agencies are an outcome of the market where supply and demand determine prices?\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he asked.<\/p>\n

 
\nBrown went on to say that under Hunt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s government, the nursing profession has been especially affected, making agency working a more desirable option for many nurses.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bSince 2010 there has been a drop in student nurses being trained and over the past five years nurses have had a real drop in income of 15 per cent \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not surprising that they are tempted to work for agencies,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 
\nWhile the swelling NHS deficit rapidly accelerated in the last three months, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been steadily increasing from 2010, just as the Tory-led coalition government began its term.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe government inherited a surplus of nearly \u00c2\u01412bn that year, which steadily dropped until NHS finances went into the red in 2013\/2014. With the deficit now at almost \u00c2\u01411bn, the health service\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s finances dropped by a stunning 143 per cent over the past six years.<\/p>\n

 
\nBrown argued that the health service\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s financial woes were also the result of dangerous government underfunding.<\/p>\n

 
\nChickens coming home<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe financial chickens are coming home to roost big-time,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis is what happens when you have growing demand for NHS services and then decide to impose \u00c2\u014120bn of so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0098efficiency savings\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHealth secretary Jeremy Hunt needs to start banging the cabinet table to get more funds in real terms from the chancellor George Osborne, otherwise the NHS will go into a financial meltdown.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nAlthough the present Tory government pledged \u00c2\u01418bn in extra funding for the NHS by 2020, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not clear when the health service can expect to benefit.<\/p>\n

 
\nPaul Briddock of the Healthcare Financial Management Association noted that the extra funds are needed urgently.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt has now been 188 days since the government vowed to inject \u00c2\u01418bn of much-needed extra funding into the NHS and we still await confirmation as to where and when this investment will be made,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThey now need to keep their promise and make their pledged investment a priority.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis extra funding is critically important in order to help plug the severe decline in our healthcare finances, which is at unprecedented levels.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nBut GP Charles West, who helped co-author a report detailing the costs of the NHS \u00e2\u20ac\u0098pseudo-market\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, noted that \u00c2\u01418bn was nowhere near enough, and wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help much anyway if the government continued to impose a market structure on the NHS \u00e2\u20ac\u201c an idea that was introduced in the 1990s and accelerated under the Health and Social Care Act of 2012.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe pseudo-market imposed on the NHS has been reliably estimated to cost \u00c2\u014120bn a year,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bEven if [chancellor] George Osborne comes up with the \u00c2\u01418bn he has promised it will not solve the problem, it will simply pour more money into the hands of the private providers and management consultants who are gathering like vultures round a corpse.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nBrown highlighted one of the most damaging aspects of NHS marketization \u00e2\u20ac\u201c private finance initiatives (PFIs), which called one of the \u00e2\u20ac\u015bmain culprits of the deficit\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 and is \u00e2\u20ac\u015bdragging the trusts in England into eye-watering debt\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.<\/p>\n

 
\nPFIs fund public infrastructure projects with private capital. They have fronted cash to build many hospitals in the UK but their lifetime cost far exceeds how much private companies initially spend to build the hospitals, plunging trusts into debt.<\/p>\n

 
\nAn analysis conducted earlier this year found that the total PFI bill for this year will hit \u00c2\u01412bn \u00e2\u20ac\u201c amounting to nearly \u00c2\u01414,000 every 60 seconds.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe PFI bill is enough to treat all cystic fibrosis patients for the next 20 years, and it would also be able to pay the wages for all qualified midwives for the next two and half years.<\/p>\n

 
\nAgainst a backdrop of ever-increasing NHS debt, it was discovered last month that a senior NHS executive in charge of the NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA), David Flory, was handed down a \u00c2\u0141410,000 \u00e2\u20ac\u0098golden handshake\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 upon his retirement, in addition to his \u00c2\u0141235,000 salary.<\/p>\n

 
\nIt was a move that Barrie Brown called \u00e2\u20ac\u015ba disgraceful reward for mediocre performance\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Health Service\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deficit has ballooned to nearly \u00c2\u01411bn in the first three months of the year, figures released on Friday (October 9) revealed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sparking what experts have called the worst financial crisis for the NHS in a generation.   Figures released by the health service\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s financial regulator Monitor found that NHS Foundation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[29,81],"wps_subtitle":"Worst financial crisis in a generation ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6244"}],"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=6244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6246,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6244\/revisions\/6246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}