Attempts to find hundreds of millions of pounds in savings from NHS organisations in Yorkshire are dragging services back to the 1960s, an MP has warned.
The Government is instigating a radical shake-up of services, aimed at accelerating an NHS efficiency plan to improve healthcare while also curbing a massive overspend by the introduction of so-called Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs).
But Bassetlaw MP John Mann told Parliament that a STP for South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw designed to meet a £571m budget black hole for the area’s NHS and social care organisations in the next four years is a “smokescreen for cuts”.
He said the effects of finding savings are already having a major impact – with new mothers told to weigh their own babies, weeks of delays in getting breast cancer screening and the planned downgrading of a children’s unit leaving parents facing the prospect of 80-mile round trips to take their poorly children to hospital for overnight stays.