WARRINGTON Hospital is facing its “biggest crisis in recent history” with a projected deficit for 2015/2016 of £15 million.
The NHS Trust has also been forced to “declare turnaround situation” and launch a major ‘strategic review,’ bringing in Accountancy firm KPMG “to get a grip” on hospital finances, says Labour’s Nick Bent.
Mr Bent, Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Warrington South, has pinned the blame for the growing financial crisis at Warrington Hospital firmly on David Cameron’s broken promises on the NHS and on the local Tory MP for voting for deeply damaging policies.
But he praised hospital staff for “doing a brilliant job in very tough circumstances.”
Mr Bent says new evidence has now emerged of the major financial crisis facing Warrington Hospital as a direct result of failed Tory policies on the NHS.
Late last week, Hospital Trust chief executive Mel Pickup wrote to all staff about the challenges facing the Hospital, which is now being formally investigated by Monitor.
The official letter to staff reveals that:
• The projected deficit for 2015/2016 is £15 million
• Warrington Hospital is facing “one of the biggest challenges in our recent history”
• The Trust has had to “declare itself in a turnaround position”
• Warrington Hospital has brought in accountancy firm KPMG to help “identify how we may return to a sustainable position” – KPMG began work at the hospital last week.
Now the Labour Party has also published new figures showing the extent of the crisis in A&E in the NHS, including at Warrington hospital.
Across England, more than 30,000 patients each week now wait too long to be seen in local A&E departments – an increase of more than 50 per cent on the same period last year.
The analysis covers the whole of England and includes detailed new statistics from Warrington & Halton NHS Trust, where the number of patients waiting over 4 hours in A&E increased four-fold in one year, from 67 patients during the second week of April 2014 to 274 patients during the same week in April 2015. The number of patients on a trolley between 4 and 12 hours waiting for a ward bed increased from 18 to 120 patients across the same period.
For the first time, Labour Party analysis of official NHS England data names the A&E departments where performance deteriorated most significantly in the last 12 months.
The NHS expects patients to be seen, treated, dismissed or admitted within four hours and the Government target is for this standard to be reached for 95 per cent of patients. Yet hospitals around the country fail to achieve that target for rapidly growing numbers of patients.
Similarly, for patients admitted to hospital after visiting A&E, twice as many now wait on trolleys for as long as 12 hours for a bed due to the shortage of available space on the wards.
To tackle the Tory NHS crisis, Ed Miliband has set out an NHS Rescue Plan for Labour’s first 100 days in office. It includes putting significant resources from a mansion tax into the NHS this year; an emergency recruitment round for nurses to get 1,000 more into training this year; and kick starting early planning to avoid another winter crisis in hospitals with GPs stationed in all A&E departments and more clinically-trained staff on the NHS 111 advice line.
Mr Bent has also highlighted the fact that the sitting Conservative MP for Warrington South does not himself use the town’s hospital or GPs because he has moved away to Macclesfield.
Mr Bent commented: “Despite the heroic efforts of over-stretched NHS staff, our town’s hospital is in crisis as a direct result of David Cameron’s failed policies on the NHS, which the sitting Tory MP has voted for every single time. We need a change to a Labour government to rescue the NHS.”
Labour Leader Ed Miliband commented: “On David Cameron’s watch it’s harder to get a GP appointment, care budgets have been slashed and £3 billion has been wasted on an NHS reorganisation he promised wouldn’t happen.”
“Labour has a better plan for our National Health Service. We will use the proceeds of a Mansion Tax to recruit 8,000 more GPs and 20,000 more nurses so we can provide what patients need most, an NHS with time to care.”
Mel Pickup, chief executive at Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We have been very open and honest about our financial position with our staff and the public after what has been a challenging year. We had a deficit of around £6m for the year which has just finished which is carried forward into this year. That’s why we have declared what we call a turnaround situation to address this and monitor our expenditure very carefully.
“Business at the hospitals continues very much as usual but we do face a challenge that we need to meet. We are continuing to provide the very best in care to our patients, recruiting to key posts and vacancies to reduce our temporary staffing costs and transforming the way some of our services work. This includes a clear plan that is reducing delays in A&E after the increased numbers of emergency patients that we have seen over the last year. We’ve also agreed with Monitor to bring in some external expertise to develop our longer term clinical services strategy to bring us back to a sustainable position.”
Warrington South Conservative parliamentary candidate David Mowat (pictured right) hit back saying: “Ed Miliband has given instructions to his candidates to “weaponise” the NHS and comments like this at this stage should be taken in that context.
“I am proud that there are now more doctors, more nurses and more midwives in the NHS. Nationally and in Warrington, than there were in 2010. The staff at Warrington Hospital do a superb job and we should be supporting them as they cope with ever-increasing demand.
“It’s a shame that Ed Miliband’s party has refused to support my campaign for a fairer funding formula for the NHS which would benefit towns like Warrington which have been historically underfunded. ”
Warrington Hospital – facing biggest challenges in recent history
