Sixty more hospital beds to go - but ‘it’s not cost-cutting’

CLOSING more wards at one of the region’s main hospitals is a “natural progression” a trust chief executive has claimed.

Two wards, the equivalent of 60 beds, look set to close at Hull Royal Infirmary, which has to save £50m over the next five years.

Phil Morley, chief executive of Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, admitted they faced an “enormous savings challenge” but said redistributing resources to primary and social care would “reduce the need for as many hospital beds.”

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He said: “In respect of hospital finances, it is no secret that millions of pounds are set to be diverted from acute hospital care into primary care and community resources through the nationally-led Better Care Fund. This redirection of resources will help to ensure more patients can be seen and treated more appropriately, closer to home, reducing the need for as many hospital beds.

“We anticipate this work will have an impact on the need for hospital beds, and so any future bed reductions or ward closures would be a natural progression of this work, not a cost-cutting exercise. Simply closing wards and removing beds at this stage will not help us and will not help our patients.”

However Ray Gray, regional officer for Unison, said removing resources at a time when increasing numbers were coming into the hospital wasn’t going to work.

And he insisted the trust’s cost-cutting plans, now in the third year, were not achieving the required savings. He said: “If they do complete the five-year programme they are taking away a third of the capacity; you will never convince me that is going to work.”

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Hull East MP Karl Turner said upwards of £3bn spent reorganising the NHS would have been better spent upgrading hospitals like HRI.

Its tower block has a lifespan of only 20 more years, despite the recent spending of £8m replacing loose exterior tiles. The MP said: “I am concerned that this trust will buckle under these economic pressures and leave NHS staff to take the flack.”

But Ian Blakey, chairman of the local Healthwatch group, said the problem of given a good quality service to increasing numbers of patients could only be resolved by providers working together. He said: “There’s no doubt in my mind that service delivery and the cost of the service can be improved if that happens.”

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