Senior officials have set “aggressive” targets to reduce the number of patients referred to specialists, or treated in Accident and Emergency departments, while GPs will be asked to cut down on the amount of time spent in consultations.
The plans are being issued as senior managers warned that the NHS is about to face the greatest financial pressures since its inception.
They fear that when the current spending round ends in 2011, the impact of an anticipated real terms freeze or cuts - coming as the demands on the NHS of an ageing population increases - will be devastating.
The NHS Confederation, which represents NHS managers, will tell this week’s Labour Party conference that the impending challenge is so great that hospital closures and job cuts must be enforced across the country. It comes as two leading think tanks predict a future funding gap of between £20bn and £40bn within six years of 2011.
Regional health authorities have ordered hospitals and primary care trusts to draw up plans for cuts worth billions.
In London, NHS trusts have been told to divert more than half of A&E patients, and those seeing specialists, to cheaper “polyclinics” run by groups of GPs. Meanwhile, family doctors will be asked to speed up their consultations, reducing the average time per patient from 12 minutes to eight.
Read more at The Telegraph.
Tags: Funding
