Is Chorley A&E closure being used to fill financial black hole

Are hospital service closures being used to fill black hole in Trusts finances?

The Chief Executive of Chorley and Preston Hospitals 'Karen Partington' stated in June 2018 that financial and operational performance are inextricably linked and this has had an affect on patient care and missing targets.

The fact that the Lancashire hospital trust are £37m in deficit [June 2018]  adds to suspicions by local NHS campaigners that their A&E in Chorley is intentionally being primed for closure to save the trust money.

The financial difficulties beset by the Lancashire hospital trust are a culmination of issues that have accrued over the years. In 2017 the hospital trusts financial director stated that A&E (Preston and Chorley) was 'driving all the deficit', indicating this service area would be a likely target for efficiency savings (cuts).

This was further evidenced in the regions 'Sustainability & Transformation Plan' (STP) which identified savings could be made by relieving pressures on acute hospital services by closing many hospital services and relocating them into communities. According to the regions STP, health bosses across Lancashire and South Cumbria need to save £583m between 2015 and 2021.

STP: In 2015, the head of NHS England Simon Stevens, an ex vice-president of U.S. private health insurer 'United Health', divided England into 44 footprint regions with each 'footprint' asked to prepare their own Sustainability & Transformation Plan. The plans were a response to deliberate government underfunding with the overall intention of pushing through American health models called 'Accountable Care Organisations' (ACO).

In 2017, a report from a program design team of advisers working on an STP plan for Central Lancashire recommended 80% of outpatients currently seen in acute settings at Chorley and Preston hospitals will not be seen there in future.

The Trust chief executive said “This month [June 2018] local health and care organisations met to map and review urgent and emergency care processes and pathways, to identify what’s working, and address what isn’t, so that together we can drive improvements to ensure that in the future our communities can access the care they need, when they need it, in the appropriate setting.

It's still not understood why the trusts chief executive believes a hospital is deemed an inappropriate setting for providing these services, as these services have served hospitals well for the last 70 years.

The STP however indicates the more lucrative and low risk hospital services will be shifted out of public NHS hospitals into private clinics within communities - all at the risk of being taken over by private ventures campaigners assert.

After all, the credentials of the man running the show Simon Stevens speak volumes (see link below).

Simon Stevens spent the best part of a decade as a senior executive at UnitedHealth – the largest private health insurer in the United States..
More: Who is the boss of NHS England 'Simon Stevens'?

NHS Chiefs trying to plug £37m black hole in finances