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NHS must make 250m surplus next year
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Best year ever!
"The NHS in England has been told it must achieve a £250m surplus next year.
The service ended the last financial year £512m in deficit, but Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has pledged to balance the books this year."
Source: BBC
Thoughts on this? Would have thought that given that it's state owned, the concepts of profit and deficit are fairly moot. Also given that PCTs have their own budgets, might be a good idea to look at it in that context rather than the NHS as a whole? Law school is looking better and better...
"The NHS in England has been told it must achieve a £250m surplus next year.
The service ended the last financial year £512m in deficit, but Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has pledged to balance the books this year."
Source: BBC
Thoughts on this? Would have thought that given that it's state owned, the concepts of profit and deficit are fairly moot. Also given that PCTs have their own budgets, might be a good idea to look at it in that context rather than the NHS as a whole? Law school is looking better and better...
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I think its totally stupid to try and plan an organisation as big as the NHS on a scale like this, individual trusts should be given a 10% each way allowance to allow for more illness or a major incident.
That's certainly one option, although £250m isnt going to go very far. The best thing to do with it would be pay off some of the PFI debts.
I'd give a toss if it was running at a £100bn deficit, but a deficit of about 1 or 2% of turnover is nothing.
It means funds have to be withdrawn from other areas or taxes raised from somewhere.
and running a government is a complex and swerious task so glib responses concerning taxing the rich or leaving Iraq won't do......
Considering the government borrowed something like £12bn from the banks last financial year, i'd imagine the chance of a surplus is pretty remote.
The whole idea of a universal public healthcare service is that it offers the best possible care to patients. If it comes to choose between making "a profit" and keeping an A & E ward open or having a certain specialist unit available so patients don't have to travel 20 miles to get it elsewhere, it's a no brainer really...
Once again we come to the crunch point: you cannot run vital public services for profit. The one and only aim of a public service is to serve the public in the best way possible. To hell with profits and balance sheets.
Of course there is a question of whether the whole thing can be run more efficiently. But the one thing we must never do is to restrict or cut down on services in order to balance the books.
Doesnt that mean that what the government really wants the NHS to give it back £250m?
Yes.
If the best possible care to patients means the NHS is run at a loss, then so be it.
If that rhetoric was valid, then all the employees of the corporation doing business as the NHS would be labouring for free, or bare minimum expenses.
And to take it further, anyone supplying the NHS(e.g. with drugs, machinery, beds,uniforms etc) would be forced to do so for nothing
The smoking ban has no realtionship with the economics of the NHS.
As for the OP, this is all just a paper exercise. Consider this, if the NHS as a whole has a budget of say £750m then all they have to do is give £500m to PCTs and keep the rest. At the end of the year they can then claim a "surplus" of £250m.
IMHO it's a crock though. This isn't something which should be crowed about or should be used to say how wonderful the NHS is. All this says is that the general public were robbed of £250m or that £250m worth of care wasn't given. To put it into perspective, that could prvide for the health needs of about 180,000 people for a year... based on PCT budgets.
So basically this is a cut then?
No, there will be an increase in the NHS budget next year. Work that one out!
Must. Avoid. Urge. To. Bite.
Does she work for a PCT or an acute Trust?
So they are getting an increase, and then they have to give £250m of it back? Isnt this what Labour like doing, messing things about to look like they are in control when in reality they are just messing things up.
Of course, it means that some people won't get the treatment which would otherwise beavailable, but hey if the NHS was there to make people better it wouldn't have political masters anyway...
Of course it's there to make people feel better, at least about themselves. It's just not neccessarily there to cure people...