An NHS facing up to reality

THE problems facing the health service in North Yorkshire and York are, in many ways, starkly indicative of the situation confronting the NHS nationally. Faced with the need to make major savings, the service also finds itself facing wholesale reorganisation in order to meet the fast-changing demands of 21st-century society.

Both these needs can be traced back to the way in which the Labour government handled the NHS during its 13 years in office. In an attempt to bring services up to the standard experienced by patients elsewhere in Europe, Gordon Brown unleashed a massive spending programme.

However, because the then Chancellor believed that money alone was the answer to the NHS’s problems, the spending was not accompanied by any kind of structural reform until it was almost too late and the huge budget increases were drying up. Even without the financial crisis, then, NHS managers must have known that a period of financial retrenchment was inevitable and that major reforms would have to be carried out at the same time.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Hence, the independent review of North Yorkshire and York calls for £230m savings by 2015, getting rid of 200 hospital beds, offering patients more care in their own homes and ending the duplication and triplication of services that has gone on for far too long.

But in holding up North Yorkshire as a national example, it is important not to forget those characteristics that make it very different from many other health authorities, namely a huge and mainly rural area, a scattered and ageing population, transport problems and a consequent difficulty in recruiting staff. These factors, too, have been ignored for too long and it is vital that they are addressed in all future funding decisions.