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| I was utterly dismayed to hear of health cuts across Suffolk. |
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| I have been a patient on a West Suffolk ward after being operated on twice. So I know at first hand how dedicated our local nurses, support staff and doctors are. Talk of cutbacks will hurt the morale of these hard working, caring public servants. |
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| The NHS in Suffolk is going through its worse crisis in recent memory. Those on the frontline of delivering care to all of us are being told they will not have the tools they need to do the job. More money has gone into the NHS – we all support this. But why isn’t it resourcing the sharp end? |
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| Some of the fault lies with the expanding culture of bureaucracy and sub-standard management that undermined NHS finances. |
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| It is also true that London Ministers give Suffolk funding per patient that is much lower than the national average. |
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| At the West Suffolk Hospital around 220 hospital staff could lose their jobs, 10% of beds could be cut and two surgical theatres could close as health bosses try and reduce the spiralling debts. |
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| It was a crisis that was bound to happen. Richard Spring MP and I have been warning of this for over two years. |
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| We have called many meetings with local NHS managers in Suffolk and called them to the House of Commons. Every time we have been given numerous promises that the issue of the growing deficit would be resolved. Yet the deficit has continued to grow and now local people are set to be hit hard by cutbacks. |
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| There’s something called the Strategic Health Authority of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. (Nationally, such Authorities cost one thousand million pounds a year!) It is meant to monitor the local PCT and Hospital Trust. This regional Quango has been useless. No wonder its Chairman and Chief Executive have left in the last 6 months. It should be closed down now, without delay and the cash directed to the professionals. |
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| Each time we have been told it will be “alright on the night”. And each time they have been wrong. We were told acute hospital admissions would be reduced by better GP treatment. The burgeoning prescription budget would be brought under control. Management would be reduced. The opposite has happened. The PCT and Hospital Trust Boards have not done their jobs and they have let down local health workers. Why haven’t any of the Directors of those boards resigned? – it would be the honourable thing to do after failing to grip the deficit year after year. |
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| The West Suffolk Hospital has now announced cuts to rein in its finances. The Suffolk West Primary Care Trust has also plans to close the Walnuttree Hospital and shut beds at Newmarket Hospital. |
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| All this comes on top of yet more bad news for local health services with the latest worrying statistics for levels of MRSA in our local hospitals. The financial chaos can’t help MRSA control, can it? |
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| No wonder new Government figures show that the region's major hospital trusts – Ipswich, West Suffolk and James Paget – are all in the bottom 42 of the MRSA league table. |
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| Suffolk health is under great pressure. Getting decent management in to better manage the finances is the first step on the road to recovery. |
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