Cuts won’t hit quality of health care, says minister

It was revealed this week that the Health Department plans to make £7.6 million of cuts by the end of 2016 to improve efficiency and release more money to spend on frontline services.

Proposed measures include reducing spending on food for patients, closing some hospital beds at weekends, securing better deals for specialist care from the UK and reviewing patient transport policy.

But Health Minister Andrew Green has stressed that there will be no reduction in the quality of service, despite fears that the proposed cuts will hit frontline care.

The minister said that a lot of hospital food was being thrown away, so there would be a focus on reducing waste.

‘We will not deprive patients of the food that they are entitled to, but at the moment too much food is ending up in the bin,’ he added.

‘It will mean measures like being careful with portion sizes – we don’t need to give too much food to people who don’t need it.’

The minister said that the review of patient travel policies could see UK specialists being flown over when they are needed, rather than having groups of patients travelling to the UK.

And he added that some patients could be encouraged to use public transport instead of the patient transfer bus to attend appointments, which he claimed could speed up their journey times.

With regard to the closure of hospital beds at the weekend, he said that no one will be deprived a bed, but pointed out that there were savings opportunities.

‘Sometimes you have wards which are not full at the weekend even though they are busy in the week, so we are going to consolidate,’ he said.

‘A lot of patients ask to go home at the weekend, and we be will looking at closing wards when they are nearly empty and when it is possible to do so.’

He added that the hospital site manager would decide when closures would take place.

Senator Green added that securing better deals with UK health specialists would mean looking further across the country for service providers.

‘We have moved some of our operations to places like Oxford and Cambridge – you get first-class clinical care there, but it’s considerably cheaper.’

He added that the department was looking at work with the Guernsey Health Service to secure better contracts from the UK.

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