Looks like tomorrow’s NHS news review is going to be about cuts causing huge waiting time increases. This is the result of cuts imposed by the Con-Dem – Conservative and Liberal-Democrat – UK coalition government.

NHS news: Confirmation that changes are progressing before the legislation is passed, that the listening exercise is a con, that there are currently substantial cuts to NHS services and that the cuts are increasing demand for private healthcare – which is the intention.

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

New Statesman – Doctors told to keep up “momentum” on NHS reform

Department of Health writes to GPs telling them to press on with reforms, despite the government’s listening exercise.

The Evening Standard has obtained a letter to GPs from Dame Barbara Hakin, the Department of Health’s national managing director of commissioning development, urging them to keep up the “momentum” around reform.

Everyone within the Department of Health is very aware of the support shown by the GP community to date and we have been struck by the energy and enthusiasm demonstrated in pathfinders across the country. Therefore, although the Government has taken the opportunity of a natural break in the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill, we are very keen that the momentum we have built to date should not stop.

The letter was sent the day after the Royal College of Nurses overwhelmingly backed a vote of no confidence in the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley.

The listening exercise was an unusual step taken because of profound discomfort from medical professionals and the public. As I reported last week, just 3 per cent of the public want the bill to proceed unchanged, while there have been outspoken protests from both the RCN, the British Medical Association, and a range of Liberal Democrats.

This letter certainly appears to undermine the promise from Nick Clegg and David Cameron that the aim of the listening exercise is “substantive change” to the bill.

NHS cuts expected to spark boom for private healthcare providers | Politics | The Guardian

One of the UK’s leading private hospital providers says it expects business to boom as NHS cuts bite, waiting times lengthen and those patients who can find the money decide to pay for treatment instead.

Primary care trusts, trying to balance the books before they are abolished under the coalition government’s reforms, are already significantly restricting healthcare services , according to a survey of 500 GPs carried out on behalf of Spire Healthcare, the second largest private hospital group in the country.

Although the 500 are only a fraction of the 39,000 GPs in the country, their responses are in line with other evidence that cuts are already being implemented. Most of the GPs who responded reported that they already faced offering a reduced service to patients.

More than three-quarters (77%) said they were experiencing cuts in fertility services in their area, 70% were seeing reductions in weight-loss treatments, and 40% were experiencing restrictions in ophthalmology services. Almost a third (30%) of GPs said there were restrictions on orthopaedic services.

The survey found that the cuts were not only being made in areas deemed non-urgent. More than half (54%) said waiting times had gone up for musculoskeletal work and 42% of GPs report a rise in waiting times for neurology treatment.

In addition, 29% of GPs are experiencing delays in cardiology and 28% are seeing waiting times increase in ophthalmology.

One in 10 GPs has seen waiting times increase for oncology (cancer drug treament), while 6% said they were experiencing restrictions on other types of cancer care. Almost a quarter (22%) of GPs say they are likely to refer patients to the private sector for this type of treatment. Dr Jean-Jacques de Gorter, clinical director of Spire Healthcare, said he thought the increased use of the private sector was to be expected as a result of health secretary Andrew Lansley’s measures and efficiency savings.

“I think it is an inevitable consequence,” he said. “We are already seeing waiting lists for elective admissions and diagnostics going up.”

Patients facing long waits for hip replacements, hernia repairs or bariatric surgery to restrict their eating and help weight loss are likely to turn to the private sector, De Gorter believes.

BBC News – Trafford General Hospital ‘could be privatised’

The birthplace of the NHS could be privatised, according to health managers in Greater Manchester.

Trafford General Hospital treated the first ever NHS patient when the health service was inaugurated in 1948.

Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust has now confirmed that privatisation is being considered as way of dealing with the hospital’s mounting debt.

NHS news: There are reports of changes to the NHS without the legislation having passed and doctors and nurses warning against such changes, reports of operations and other treatments being restricted due to cuts and the government increasing the use of the hugely expensive and discredited Public Finance Initiative (PFI).

The Federation of Surgical Specialty Associations reports that routine procedures are being refused as a result of government cuts.

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

NHS reforms going ahead regardless of pause, chief executive’s letter suggests | Society | The Guardian

The government has been accused of “ploughing on regardless” with its restructuring of the health service in England after the head of the NHStold staff to “maintain momentum” for the planned changes during the listening exercise being undertaken by ministers.

The timescale for implementing key parts of the health and social care bill, including handing over commissioning powers to GP groups from April 2013, remains the same despite the “pause” in the legislation going through parliament, according to David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS.

His message in a letter to colleagues will fuel concerns that the government’s promise to take on board ways it might “improve” its plans during a “natural break” is little more than cosmetic.

Labour said it was clear ministers planned to make little change, the head of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warned against “things ploughing on”, and the leader of the British Medical Association said the government must not make “irreversible” decisions.

Patients denied key treatments due to NHS cost-cutting, surgeons warn | Society | The Guardian

Growing numbers of patients are being wrongly denied a new hip, a weight loss operation or even cancer treatment because of NHS cost-cutting, the leaders of Britain’s surgeons have warned.

Increasing rationing of operations is forcing patients to endure pain, injury or disability because NHS primary care trusts (PCTs) are ignoring evidence about the effectiveness of certain treatments simply to balance their books.

The warning from the Federation of Surgical Specialty Associations (FSSA), which represents the nine major types of surgeon in the UK, is in an open letter passed to the Guardian.

It accuses trusts of letting down needy patients by branding forms of elective surgery as of limited clinical value in order to help them cope with the NHS’s tough financial climate.

The FSSA, which represents about 15,000 surgeons, says it is “concerned that lists of surgical procedures and interventions, deemed of low clinical effectiveness or of ‘lower value’, are being used by PCTs to limit access to certain procedures … Review of the lists reveals that there is little or no evidence to support the view that many of the procedures are of limited value to individual patients”.

The unprecedented statement goes on: “For example, the lists include types of hip, spinal, ENT [ear, nose and throat], dental, bariatric [obesity] and cancer surgery for which there is overwhelming evidence of benefit. The only justification for these lists can be that they are a means of reducing expenditure at a time when the NHS faces a financial crisis.”

The surgeons’ move highlights the fact that PCTs across England are increasingly delaying or denying patients access to surgery to repair a hernia, replace an arthritic hip or knee, and remove cataracts, infected tonsils, gallstones, wisdom teeth, adenoids and varicose veins. Some are even restricting the number of patients who can have a hysterectomy or have their baby in a planned caesarean section. Surgeons, heath charities and patients’ groups are increasingly frustrated that PCTs are introducing what they regard as arbitrary lists of treatments of supposedly low or no clinical value despite medical evidence that many help relieve patients’ symptoms.

PM tries to calm his NHS critics / Britain / Home – Morning Star

Prime Minster David Cameron was forced yesterday to promise “proper and substantive” changes to NHS reforms following a barrage of criticism.

Mr Cameron’s latest attempt to pacify criticism follows the coalition’s promised “pause” in the Health and Social Care Bill’s passage through Parliament for up to three months.

However the supposed delay for a “listening tour” received a frosty response among nurses at the RCN conference last week who delivered an unprecedented vote of no confidence in Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

Criticism over plans to accelerate the NHS market has mounted steadily in the last few weeks causing further tension within the already shaky Con-Dem alliance.

The cost of the PFI: lost NHS beds and jobs – plus millions in profits to private companies « Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain’s democratic left

Unison has long campaigned against what it argues is an unmanageable debt burden being levied on hospitals because of the PFI at a time of cuts. Under the schemes, private consortia finance key projects such as hospitals or other public infrastructure and are paid a fixed rate, guaranteed return over 30 years.

A brisk trade has developed in the City in selling on these debts to financiers or private equity partnerships with no involvement in the original projects. But it has emerged that because the payments are so highly prioritised – and quickly and steeply rise in cost – several NHS hospitals are being forced to close beds, cut jobs and sell off assets to make the payments at a time of reduced budgets.

Bart’s in central London is reported to have been forced to close down new beds before even opening them.

The pro-NHS campaigning group Health Emergency says that throughout the health service PFI hospitals are closing beds and cutting jobs in a “desperate bid” to balance their books.

At the new £256 million 1,200-bed Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, which opened in 2009, 700 jobs and 100 beds are being cut with more on the way.

Coalition increases ‘discredited’ PFI schemes – Channel 4 News

Chancellor George Osborne has given the go-ahead for 61 PFI projects, worth a total of £6.9bn, since coming into power.

PFI, a way of using private finance and companies to build public infrastructure projects like hospitals and roads, exploded under the Labour Government but was roundly criticised by leading members of the then-opposition, including Mr Osborne and Nick Clegg.

Labour said the model allowed the financial risks of constructing large infrastructure projects to be borne by private companies, not the taxpayer, but before the election Clegg, now Deputy Prime Minister, branded them as a “a bit of dodgy accounting – a way in which the Government can pretend they’re not borrowing when they are, and we’ll all be picking up the tab in 30 years”.

Mr Osborne said in 2009 that the model was “discredited”.

‘I may lose the sight in one eye because the NHS won’t pay for my treatment’ (From Bournemouth Echo)

A DORSET man is facing losing the sight in one eye because the local NHS has refused to pay for the injections his GP and specialist recommend.

Accountant Mike Fort, 48, of Corfe Mullen, was diagnosed with a rare form of wet macular degeneration two and a half years ago, when he was living in Weymouth. The disease happens when tiny abnormal blood vessels begin to grow behind the retina, the innermost coating of the eyeball. They usually leak, damaging the middle of the retina, or macula, and cause a rapid loss of central vision, making it difficult to read, watch television or recognise faces.

Through his employer’s private health insurance, Mike was given injections into his eye of a drug called Lucentis, which works by preventing the growth of the abnormal blood vessels.