Swine flu bill may hit healthcare

The cost of battling swine flu means NHS health trusts could be forced to cut other services.

A survey of 107 primary care trusts (PCTs) in England showed the cost of responding to swine flu was 340,000 on average per trust.

One in six of all PCTs may have to cut other services – or already has done – in order to recoup costs, analysis from 31 of the PCTs suggests.

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Others have used contingency funds to meet the costs of tackling the pandemic, according to the analysis from GP newspaper, which submitted a Freedom of Information request to trusts.

Of 56 PCTs, four per cent spent 500,000 or less while nine per cent spent more than 600,000, the figures showed.

Overall, costs ranged from 11,100 to 1.7m, and included money spent on staffing, equipment and communications.

Some costs may not have been accounted for, including redeploying some staff.

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Several trusts said they would have to recoup the costs over the next year.

The report follows figures from the NHS Information Centre which showed the number of days spent in hospital beds with flu in 2009 was up 700 per cent on 2008, a total of 33,376 days compared with 4,163 in 2008.

Leeds GP Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association's GP Committee, said individual trusts should not have had to foot the bill. I think a pandemic should be seen as an exceptional circumstance and a PCT should be fully supported by central government," he said.

"The whole nature of a national health service is that one area should be able to support another, and the unusual financial burden of this episode should be borne centrally."