on NHS cuts and closures Pressure group Health Emergency have challenged the Government to come clean on whether the Darzi report on the NHS - published on October 4 - means an service closures and job cuts across the NHS.
In the past 18 months over 25,000 jobs have been axed from the NHS and a series of regional reviews have identified a raft of maternity units, A&E departments and mental health services for closure.
Lord Darzi has now indicated that he will be bringing in his own teams of experts in the Regions to look at services with the suggestion that the existing finance-led reviews, and their associated cuts and closures, will be put on hold.
Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:
"Any genuine attempt to engage staff and patients in reviewing the future pattern of local health services would be a positive move and would be a welcome break from the current top-down approach where bureaucrats bulldoze through cuts and closures in the teeth of staff and public opposition.
"However, if we're to have any confidence in the brave, new world of Lord Darzi the existing cuts-led reviews have to be stopped and the axe that's hanging over dozens of local hospitals and services must be lifted.
"We are challenging the Government for a categoric assurance on that key point." towards "centralizing" more hospital services and downsizing many hospital Acclacil Emergencv departments to "urgent care centres".
First CauC Sheffield University study, carefully weigning evidence and Intormation to draw the apparently common-sense conclusion that longer ambulance journeys for treatment can have a seriously detrimental impact on ine survival chances ol some groups of patients.
This has been stubbornly and indignantly denied by NHS managers seeking to close down A&E units and obliging patients to travel further, and by ambulance trust bosses eager to trumpet the skills of their workforce and the impressive range of lifesaving equipment that is now carried in emergency ambulances.
Their response to the Sheffield study was to rubbish it, pointing to the fact that it is based on information that is now seven vears old.
However, this is the most
and study of the issue to be carried out, and not that much has changed in terms of resources and training of ambulance statt that would question the
Ambulance crew themselves, while justifiably proud of their skills, also point out the difficulty of conducting life-saving treatment and using sophisticate equipment
the back of a swaying ambulance and the importance in manv cases of getting the patient to hospital in the shortest possible time. In other words plans such as the Hertfordshire proposal to close A&E and other frontline hospital services Heme Hempstead and journeys along highly congested roads to Stevenage (Lister Hospital) or Watford General Hospital. But the second major report struck right at the heart of the whole rationalization DIO gramme across the NHS: a 154-page study by the Academy of Medical Royal