Hundreds of jobs are at risk as two key NHS boards for Sussex and Surrey prepare to merge as part of a money-saving drive by the government.<\/p>\n
NHS Sussex and NHS Surrey Heartlands \u2013 two integrated care boards (ICBs) \u2013 are expected to have merged by next April, shedding many of the 1,350 staff who currently work at the two organisations.<\/p>\n
The changes are part of the latest round of NHS reforms which include the abolition of NHS England and the scrapping of independent patient voice watchdogs known as Healthwatch.<\/p>\n
Sussex ICB chair Stephen Lightfoot spoke about the forthcoming changes at Brighton and Hove City Council\u2019s Health and Wellbeing Board at Hove Town Hall on Tuesday (22 July).<\/p>\n
ICBs bring together NHS organisations, councils and others to plan and commission health services in their area, with the aim of improving health and reducing inequalities.<\/p>\n
Mr Lightfoot, who will stand down in September, said that ICBs were told in March to halve their running costs \u2013 from \u00a339.83 to \u00a318.76 per head of population \u2013 by December.<\/p>\n
Further bad news followed when an analysis of national funding allocations suggested that Sussex was overfunded by \u00a3186 million.<\/p>\n
Mr Lightfoot said that NHS Sussex had a \u00a34.5 billion budget for NHS services in Sussex but the analysis indicted that it should be \u00a34.3 billion and was 4 per cent overfunded.<\/p>\n
Mr Lightfoot said: \u201cThat doesn\u2019t sound a lot on a percentage basis but \u00a3200 million is a significant sum of money.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the next three years, when our demand continues to increase, we\u2019re going to have to reduce our expenditure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to work very hard to make better use of the money that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that this would not affect the budget for delivering healthcare throughout the area \u2013 but, he said, combining Sussex and Surrey was the only safe and reliable way to deliver sustainable services.<\/p>\n
Mr Lightfoot spoke about \u201cthe massive scale of this task (and) the huge impact it\u2019s having on our staff \u2026 1,350 people are worried if they\u2019ve got a job.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd of course a significant number of them will not have a job in the coming year\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe\u2019re not alone. The government also confirmed it\u2019s going to rationalise all patient safety regulators.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat involves Healthwatch organisations which are going to be closed, not immediately, but over the next 18 months to two years.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be the first time since 1974 that patients would be without a statutory independent voice, the meeting was told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of jobs are at risk as two key NHS boards for Sussex and Surrey prepare to merge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[105,4348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-287645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114907687396621933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}