15.09.11
NHS must specialise, or find an extra £5bn
The NHS needs an extra £5bn to save up to 40 hospitals before 2013, according to Paul Corrigan, the former health advisor to Tony Blair. This includes at least 30 failing trusts that are unlikely to become Foundation Trusts (FTs), and ten FTs that are set to face a cash crisis.
Writing for the think tank Reform, Corrigan suggests that hospitals need to specialise in either diagnosis or treatment, and that attempting to do both for everyone is leading to failure. Many hospitals currently have unsustainable businesses models, but are kept open to please the public, he writes.
Corrigan says: “As many as 40 hospitals may have to change radically or close … the old model and concept of the hospital are failing. Currently, hospital failure is averted by granting a variety of forms of interim financial support, yet if the government is to continue to protect all of England's hospitals from closure or reconfiguration [this would] mean the chancellor would have to find an extra £5bn to bail out the NHS by 2013.
“If the NHS does not radically alter hospitals then a company like Circle will come in and do it. We're already seeing mergers to create super trusts. The problem is that the public are not being told that they will have to travel for better treatment rather than go to a local hospital.”
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