KEEP OUR NHS PUBLIC

           CORNWALL             

28^th November 2016.

CORNWALL NHS CHALLENGED OVER “FLAWED” PLAN

“Keep our NHS public Cornwall” (KONP) a cross-sector campaign group of health professionals, trades unions and community activists/representatives in Cornwall has today challenged Cornwall’s NHS, following the release of the “Sustainability and Transformation Plan” (STP).

KONP has undertaken an initial analysis of the key elements of the proposed plan, released on Monday 28th November. Whilst many of the proposals are desirable, KONP has concluded that it is unrealistic to expect the proposals to be achieved without adequate guaranteed funding.  We are also bitterly disappointed that the Chancellor has failed to recognise the crisis in funding of Health and Social Care in his Autumn Statement.

KONP have therefore concluded that without guaranteed funding the proposals are unachievable.

KONP believes that the proposals will inevitably lead to:

• ·         Hospital closures including community beds.
• ·         Further reduction in acute beds
• ·         Inadequate mental health support
• ·         Service cuts
• ·         Outsourcing and privatisation
• ·         Staffing cuts, downgrading and attacks on pay
• ·         Continuing pressure on social care

KONP welcomes proposals to integrate services and to prioritise public health initiatives to improve health and wellbeing. We also support any proposals to pool budgets, to reduce the number of providers and to simplify the commissioning process by reducing the need for competition.

However, KONP maintains that the STP in its current form lacks sufficient practical detail as to how it could work in practice, how any reforms would be funded, and how it would be made sustainable. We believe that the plan lacks credibility and is no more than an idealised wish list.

Rik Evans said following the release of the STP.

“We have grave concerns about this plan. We support many of its aspirations, but without guaranteed funding it is no more than a wish list. Whilst the plan identifies potential underfunding of £264m by 2020, it fails completely to identify what a reformed system would cost.

“The crucial issue is funding .There is currently no evidence that funding will be forthcoming and without it the plan is meaningless”.

Stuart Roden added

“We recognise that there are serious fundamental issues with health and social care in Cornwall that must be tackled urgently. The system is under incredible strain, the fragmentation of the coalition government’s top-down NHS reorganisation and massive funding cuts to Cornwall council have totally failed our local community. The requirements to put services out for competitive bidding have been very costly: increasing privatisation of the NHS and resulting in many expensive failures.

“Having analysed this plan we have come to the conclusion that without a clear financial strategy and guaranteed funding this plan cannot succeed and is fundamentally flawed.”

Release ends.

Note to Editors.

For further information please contact.

Rik Evans. Rik.evans@btopenworld.com 07899915805

Stuart Roden.rodenstuart@gmail.com     01872 241079