Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely says he is pleased to see the additional costs of running small hospitals, such as St Mary’s, recognised by the government in its funding formula.
He revealed during a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday morning (6th September) that the Island had received over £5million in additional funding as a result of a new formula introduced by government to calculate the additional costs borne by unavoidably small hospitals (USHs).
St Mary’s is recognised by the Government as 1 of 12 USHs in England and Wales which are defined as being unavoidably smaller than district general hospitals due to location, population served and distance from alternative hospitals.
During his opening speech leading the debate, Mr Seely said he was grateful to the government for the additional £48million capital investment in Island healthcare services, and for the uplift of £5.3million as a result of the new funding formula for unavoidably small hospitals. However, he went on to say that the Island still needed more.
During the debate, he said:
“Whilst I am grateful for the additional funding and delighted that the previous Conservative government has recognised the additional costs – and indeed given us nearly £50 million of additional capital expenditure on the Isle of Wight – the research assessed by my own Trust assesses that the funds given are roughly half of what is needed.”
He said the Isle of Wight NHS Trust estimated in January 2019 – through its Sustainability Plan – that it would need to spend an additional £10-12 million in order to provide a similar standard of healthcare to that enjoyed by mainland residents.
Speaking after the debate, Mr Seely said:
“As a result of a campaign effort by myself and other MPs that have smaller hospitals, we’ve secured millions to ease pressures. However, there is always more to do and I will be leading a meeting for MPs from all political parties to meet with new ministers to press for better funding for the dozen unavoidably small hospitals in England and Wales.
“Government now has a formula which recognises the additional costs faced by smaller hospitals like St Mary’s which is fantastic. What we need now is to ensure that money continues to come to the Island via the new Integrated Care Board.
“While this new funding is already making a difference, it doesn’t address all the additional costs we face on the Island, so I have asked the minister to explain to me exactly how this formula works and how the money is calculated so that we can work out whether it’s working for the Island.”
Health minister, Maria Caulfield, who was present during the debate, said she would be happy to provide more details about the funding formula to Mr Seely and others.
Well let’s just hope that this time the money is spent here on the island rather being wasted in supporting the Portsmouth Hospital! We live on the island, NOT Portsmouth!
“the research assessed by my own Trust assesses that the funds given are roughly half of what is needed.”
Maybe you shouldn’t have voted for the cuts in the first place, eh, Bob?
start with a cull of unessesary extortionately paid manager jobs or ridiculous and pointless other posts
plenty of them taking from the money purse.we need it more than they do
How true that is and cut managers salary too
Let’s hope the former mainland members of the IWC planning committee don’t jump on this as a way of passing more & more huge developments for this already over populated island.
The money is to help run the hospital more efficiently. They’re not building a bigger one to cope with the increased population you have already caused.
Let’s hope it doesn’t go into salaries for more managers at the hospital, there are to many managers as it is. Get rid of a few of them and it would save more than a few quid.
Fantastic headline grab there semi sausage. Just make a speech and then take the praise for someone else’s decision to give our hospital £5 million.
I bet most of the money will be wasted on even more administrators, they will probably set up a whole new department with highly paid officials to decide how the money should be used, i bet the hard working front line staff will see no benefit from this money either in workload or conditions but there will be lots of happy pen pushers.
Maybe they can use some of the money and stop loosing my blood tests. Without them I can not get my meds, meds that keep me well and able to work.
Every cloud……..ect ect.
A lot of managers are jumped up nobody’s with no relevant experience for the roles they’re in. They’re bolshy, bully types who like they’re nasty little yes men and favourites and use their positions to climb up the ladder to earn extortionate amounts of salary for doing sfa! Great work if you can get it! Nobody gif anywhere being a hardworking nice guy
Get rid of them across the board! Big fat bosses getting fatter at our expense
You are so right.
This Hospital employees Bullies
Let’s hope the money gets spent on Patients.
Wow our Hospital is unavoidably smaller than District General Hospitals doe to location and population served and distance from alternative Hospitals !!!!!!
The clue is in the population, and the fact is we cannot cope (now) and with all this building proposed (even though St Mary’s is getting a refit etc)
it remains the same problem more housing more people same old problem !
The General infrastructure of care , roads job’s etc are not changing….
The concrete jungle jigsaw will sink the island…..
It’ll be interesting to see what they waste it on.