Voluntary redundancies are taking place at an Isle of Wight health organisation as it has to make major cutbacks to the tune of £8.7million locally.
It has led to questions over the impact that may have on Island services and the reassurance it would not affect performance.
As stipulated by NHS England, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board (ICB) has to make ‘financial efficiencies’ — equating to a 30% reduction in running costs by March 2026.
ICBs are responsible for NHS resources and performance, commissioning needed services. On the Island, by the end of March 2024, the ICB has to make £8.7million of ‘efficiency savings’.
Key risks of achieving these savings are said to be the need for reduction in the amount spent on hospital discharges and continuing healthcare and prescribing expenditure above planned levels.
To help make the cuts, the ICB is ‘reviewing and redesigning its organisational structures’, a spokesperson said, so it can deliver its responsibilities in the most efficient and effective way possible.
In the coming weeks, the spokesperson said, around 60 people will be leaving the ICB, having chosen to opt for its ‘mutually agreed resignation scheme’.
The issue was discussed at a recent health scrutiny committee of the Isle of Wight Council, where Councillor John Nicholson asked the body to be kept informed of progress and given continuous assurance that the quality and delivery of services would not be adversely affected.
Natasha Taplin, the ICB’s acting place director, assured him they would and explained they would continue to meet the statutory and legal responsibilities and obligations, even with a smaller workforce.
She said:
“The ICB is going through a difficult financial period … this will inevitably mean a shrinking of our work size but that does not mean a shrinkage of performance or our ability to commission the services we need for healthcare.”
“We are reshaping the work we carry out as an organisation so some things we have been doing, we will no longer be doing as they are not part of our statutory responsibility.”
Ms Taplin said there are opportunities across the organisation that will allow them to collaborate, ‘doing things once instead of 4 times’, which would create efficiencies.
As always efficiency cuts means less staff doing more work leading to stressed staff and poor service. Why not get rid of some of the overpaid chiefs and stop treating people from other countries free and make it law they have to have medical insurance when the visit. Sick and tired of this country, always has money to throw at bad ideas none to help the people.
What rubbish, many staff are being SACKED, not voluntery redundancy. Services are being cut and lives of public are being put at risk and ICB will create more expensive need’s down the line with Mental health, undiagnosed illness etc. Stop wasting money on spin, consultant companies and stop paying double/triple for agency workers and increase salaries for permanent staff to retain and recruit. If you loose 60 staff from IOW and then expect the others to pick up to 2000hrs of extra work will just increase burnout, sickness and negligence – mistakes will happen ,then more money wasted on serious case reviews and compensation. Why are we at front line never listened too. And why are IOW having to be responsible for Hampshire failings?.
I feel you have not understand the basis of the article, as stated we should be doing things once as opposed to four times, i.e. one person not four,.that is the trouble with all bureaucratic monsters such as the NHS, the words efficiency are banned, the NHS still struggles to come to terms with even the basic use of Tech, they still send out thousands of letters for appointments, so you have the cost of a stamp, paper and envelope plus someone to type it ,when the same result can be achieved by an e mail or text at no cost.they still employ people in hospital to push trolleys full of paper notes around when it should have been digital a decade ago, the NHS is the most inefficeint staff heavy organisation in the UK by a country mile,
Totally agree Bembridge B, in addition it is those at the top who have little knowledge of what happens at the grass roots so they will cut proper jobs, so long as they get their big fat pensions they don’t care about the nurses, porters, cleaners etc etc. Cut the top brass and save a packet and put it into the pockets of the front liners which would make them feel valued and retention of good staff beneficial for all.
And do you realise that not everyone, especially some elderly do not have the ability to receive texts or emails? So how would you communicate with them?
In that case there would still be postage !
This is all corporate double speak, what it means is that we don’t have enough money, so to save what we have we are going to cut costs regardless.
“We are reshaping the work we carry out as an organisation so some things we have been doing, we will no longer be doing as they are not part of our statutory responsibility”.
Part of that responsibility was to support Medical Practices. This will no longer happen, so expect that patient waiting times will rise, quality will drop, outcomes will be poorer. These will take longer to show, so the ICB will get away with it for a while, then they will blame COVID or the Government, or the weather, or the patients themselves.
And this is exactly how the NHS is being underfunded and run down. ‘Efficiency savings’ is resulting in redundancies, which translates to less people to do the same amount of (or more) work. This in turn leads to over stretched and over worked and burnt out staff.
And who says the Tories aren’t doing a good job? A failing NHS means more people moving towards private healthcare, playing right into their hands (and their bank balances).
If we don’t look after our NHS, we’ll lose it! Then healthcare will depend entirely on your ability to pay for it, often up front.
Get rid of some of the managers, not the front line staff. They are the ones sucking off the money, hiding away and doing f’ all.
The NHS has more staff and money than ever before but is less efficient, a damning report by the public spending watchdog reveals today
The NAO report, titled ‘Access to unplanned or urgent care’, provides Parliament with an overview of NHS services available when people need rapid access to ‘urgent, emergency, or other non-routine health services’
full-time equivalent NHS staff has increased from the most recent low of 963,471 in June 2013 to an all-time high of 1,275,354 in February 2023
NHS funding is also up, with a total budget of £152.6 billion in 2022/23, some £28.4 billion more than in 2016/17 at 2022/23 prices
perhaps if they didn’t waste time and money on woke BS and time wasters then things might be better.
Bob, get back in your hole and stop doing your canvasing on news sites. And get back to work in parliament instead of having free holidays.
they are still verifiable facts provided by the national audit office – no use denying it to suit your lefty labour narrative.
The ignorant ones do not like the truth. The holy NHS is a inefficient monolith, I have received 2 letters telling me I had not made my appointment at St Mary’s, I had already seen the consultant.
Many US medical insurance companies have been lobbying for decades to destroy the NHS so that they can push the UK into having private healthcare. Go look at the history of US healthcare and how corporate US destroyed their public healthcare. And it’s happening here. If you want to know what it will be like, it will just the same as it is trying to get to see a dentist. That is our future.
It’s utterly frightening.
Diabetics are actually dying in the US because they can’t afford to pay for the insulin they need. It costs them 10x the price the NHS pays to the same drug companies.
Yes, the NHS could be more efficient but an insurance based private healthcare system is always more inefficient than the NHS because everyone wants a cut of the profit. In the US only 10-20% of the price you pay goes on the actual treatment. The rest is paying the middlemen.
There’s a lot in this that needs clarification.
Shedding 60 staff from the Hampshire and IW ICB, not by redundancy as stated but by a ‘mutually agreed resignation’ scheme, so not eligible for unemployment benefits or services, in order to cut out completing tasks they admit to currently completing, unnecessarily, in quadruplet.
It states that it’s a review of it’s ‘organisational structure’ so perhaps this is an exercise in shedding top heavy management?
If they can shed 60 posts and maintain services and front line care as they claim perhaps it’s a blueprint for streamlined management.
You could sack half the NHS and it wouldn’t make much difference. Useless (non-)organisation run by over-inflated egos and staffed by idlers. Remember when nurses would attend wards, speak to patients, and even clean the floor? Not any more. They now just sit in the staff room looking at their phones all day long. I would ban personal phone use in all workplaces outside break times and get that lot working.
I would like to see you last 10 mins in A&E, when there is over 40 patients in there and no where to move them to and more coming through the front and back doors. The nurses DO NOT JUST SIT ON THE ARSES ON THEIR PHONES, REGULAR DON’T GET BREAKS AND ARE LUCKY UF THEY LEAVE ON TIME. YOU ARE AN IGNORANT IDIOT.
I had a fractured sternum about 4 weeks ago, was sent to urgent care unit not AandE and it was rammed, once I finally got seen by the doctor her notes said suspected heart attack/chest problems, so then I had to wait again to see the injury doctor, by the time I left the hospital and walked past And E there were 2 people in there. They’re not more efficient at anything they just move the problem away from the doors to make it look better. People base their opinions off their experiences you can’t say that isn’t valid. I know nurses who wasted work time making tik tok videos through lockdown instead of actually working. Our whole hospital is a joke and the whole system is too, don’t blame the people that can actually see the truth.
When was this? Did the apocalypse happen that day? Given the crap state of the NHS and its staff, I probably wouldn’t last 10 minutes in A and E because I would die while everyone was checking their socials.
What ever happened to the £350 million a week extra from the brexit?
Brexit never happened and never will.
The Elite dont want it to happen.
It was orchestrated to distract people from the Great Re-Set
that is taking place.
Many people don’t have a clue what is going on in the world
Population increasing, health workers decreasing, send in the men in white coats.
Getting ready for A.I to takeover