Rural residents in Northumberland and North Durham fear they will be starved of services under plans to cut £641m from the North East’s NHS by 2021.
Health and social care bosses have released the results of a “public engagement process” on the draft Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) for Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, and North Durham.
The plan is one of 44 across the country drawn up by health managers and local councils across the country in an attempt to find health savings of £22 billion a year.
The North East plan says action is needed to “close the financial gap, which by 2021, if we did nothing to resolve the situation would be, £641million.”
And the figure rises to £900million including social care budgets.
The draft plan was published in 2016 and a 12-week “programme of engagement” was launched to seek the views of local people.
Now a report on the findings released by North of England Commissioning Support has revealed “particular concerns” from rural residents.
It said: “People living in rural parts of Northumberland and North Durham are particularly concerned about how they would access services if the draft STP resulted in change.”
[…]
Many residents were “frustrated that the draft STP did not have more detail about what it would mean for individual services.
They also wanted the plan to be more specific about how the needs of certain people would be met, such as young people, carers, people with mental health problems or learning disabilities.
Article from Chronicle Live, 4 August 2017