KONP OXFORDSHIRE

‘The NHS will survive as long as there re folk left with the faith to fight for it’
(Nye Bevan)

Join our campaign in Oxfordshire to keep the NHS public.

Our campaign aims to:

• Keep Our NHS Public! This means funded from taxation, free at the point of use, and provided as a public service by people employed in the NHS and accountable to the people and Parliament.

• Build a broad-based non-party political campaign to prevent further fragmentation and privatisation of the NHS.

• Inform the public and the media about what is happening as a result of the government’s ‘reform’ programme.

• Call for a public debate about the future of the NHS and halt the further use of the private sector until such a debate is had.

Contact Oxfordshire KONP

Keep Our NHS Public, 60 Great Clarenden St,Oxford, OX2 6AX
Tel:  01865 558145
Email: bmackeith@gmail.com

Oxford KONP meets on the second Tuesday of every month. Our meetings are in the Oxford Town Hall and begin at 7.30. All meetings are open to the public.

Next Oxford KONP Meeting:  13 Sept, 7.30, Oxford Town Hall

News

PRESS RELEASE – 24 August 2016 

Horton Hospital cuts are ‘Sustainability and Transformation’ in action

Thursday’s (25 August) special meeting of the Oxon Clinical Commissioning Group board, and the 31 August meeting of the Oxford Hospitals board coincide with proposals to downgrade the Horton from a general hospital to nothing much more than Outpatients with some Intermediate Care Beds, losing Maternity and Paediatric units, Acute Care and therefore the A&E department.

The cover for the cuts is the local version of secret ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plans’ that are being rolled out across England with NO PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY.

In 2008 the Independent Reconfiguration Panel found that hospitals in Oxford were too far away for safe and timely transfer of acutely ill patients or expecting mothers from ‘Banburyshire’. Its population is now forecast to increase to 250,000, and the traffic is much worse!

If the Horton loses its services, the John Radcliffe and other Oxford hospitals will be overwhelmed. So people in the rest of the county need to oppose the Horton cuts.

The new CEO of the Hospitals Trust, Bruno Holthof, has been brought in as a ‘transformer’ with a history in private medicine and of rationalising hospital sites. Is the Horton site ‘ripe for redevelopment’?

The ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plan’

The National Health Service is already starved of funds and staff. In recent months, through NHS England, under Jeremy Hunt, a new top-down reorganisation has been developed. The plans are secret, have had no public discussion and are absent from any political manifesto.  Efforts to obtain copies of the plans in advance have been obstructed.

England has been divided into into 44 new areas called ‘Footprints’ (ours is Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and West Berkshire – ‘BOB’ to the NHS managers).

Each ‘Footprint’ has been ordered to produce a ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plan’ to bring it into financial balance before 2020. Balancing the books when funding is grossly inadequate means cuts, unfilled vacancies, and closures. The Horton plans are STPs IN ACTION. The model begins to look like the Accountable Care Organisations in the United States’ private health insurance system, with which of course NHS England’s boss Simon Stevens is familiar.

Keep Our NHS Public calls for ACCOUNTABILITY in the planning and running of our NHS, and for FUNDING TO BE INCREASED TO AT LEAST THE AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. 

Contact: Bill MacKeith (secretary) 558145 bmackeith@gmail.com

 

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