PRESS RELEASE: October 9th 2015 - For immediate release
Hospital Consultants & Specialists Association comment on three-month NHS England trust deficit figures
Hospital Consultants & Specialists Association general secretary Eddie Saville said: “The prospect of a record £2 billion deficit in NHS England trusts this year will create real concern among the hospital consultants and their support teams who are being asked to undertake more and more work with no visible increase in resources.
“This unfolding financial crisis is in part due to cutbacks to local authority social care budgets, as well as the result of years of real-terms pay cuts for front-line staff, creating staff shortages and forcing trusts to increase spending on costly agency cover.
“It should also be noted that the predicted £2bn deficit equals the amount that NHS England will spend this year on servicing costly and inefficient Private Finance Initiative contracts.
“Stress levels are already sky-high among senior hospital doctors, with 80 per cent threatening to retire early due to workplace pressures. Without robust government action on all these issues, we fear that this situation will only worsen, impacting adversely on patients’ treatment.”
NOTES to editors:
Research conducted by the Hospital Consultants & Specialists Association last month revealed serious and damaging levels of stress among senior hospital doctors. The full report is available at /media/42044/HCSA-stress-survey-who-cares-for-the-carers.pdf
HCSA is a TUC-affiliated professional association and trade union and the only union dedicated solely to hospital doctors.