NHS CUTS TRAINING

If they keep cutting back at their present rate there will soon be only bureaucrats left in the NHS...

Universities are being forced to cut staff and medical training programmes as strategic health authorities trim their budgets to reduce the NHS deficit, The Times has learnt. Nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy and radiography courses have all been severely depleted, as have community-care programmes. Vice-chancellors have given warning that the cuts are likely to cause a boom-and-bust cycle in healthcare provision that may later result in the closure of university departments.

In Central, South West and the East of England, student numbers have dropped this year by as much as a quarter. Overall they have dropped 13 per cent, as health authorities pull contracts.

England’s nursing and allied-health students are paid for via contracts between the strategic health authorities (SHAs) and the universities. Last year 97,000 students were taking such degrees. At the University of the West of England (UWE), a loss of 900,000 pounds in contracts has resulted in 114 fewer students this year, and the end of all conversion courses for nurses wanting to retrain either as midwives and health visitors or to work in the community. Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire SHA made savings of 7.8 million pounds in training programmes in 2005-06 and is continuing to do so. The fear, says Steve West, UWE’s deputy vice-chancellor, is that the cuts will continue. “Our health-visiting, district-nursing and midwifery conversion courses have all been cut, gone, closed,” he said. “It’s becoming very difficult to sustain our commitment to the NHS when our budgets keep being cut.”

England’s SHAs made savings or “underspent” last year by 524 million, but they are now being asked to set aside a further minimum of 350 million for a contingency fund. Much of this money, argues the Council of Deans for Nursing and Health Professions, is coming out of their education and training budgets. This is resulting in the loss of academics and contracts for nurses and and other health professionals.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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