Stakeholder briefing –
Spending NHS money wisely
GP groups across Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge are about to engage on
proposals for changes to IVF services, prescribing and cosmetic procedures.
Dear stakeholder
As GPs working in surgeries across Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge we
know only too well the pressures that the NHS faces both here and nationally at the moment.
The care and treatment that we, along with our GP colleagues, provide every day for our
patients is funded by taxpayers’ money. That’s why we have a duty to spend it wisely, to
make sure we get the best value we possibly can for every penny – especially when NHS
funding is being severely squeezed and we are seeing more patients with more complex
health issues than ever before.
We are faced with some very difficult choices if we are to protect our most essential health
services – things like cancer care, emergency care, life threatening conditions and mental
health services – for the coming years.
To protect those services in our area we have to make savings locally of £55million and to
do that we must look at reducing spending now. That’s why we are asking for your help.
This week the local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are launching an eight week
public engagement programme to talk about some of the things we think we can save
money on and why. We want to know what you think too. We haven’t made any decisions
yet and we won’t until we have heard from you and your residents – our patients.
Unfortunately, no change is not an option. We are family doctors, not politicians, but it’s up to
us – with all of our stakeholders’ help - to get the local NHS onto a secure and sustainable
footing to ensure that we can maintain those vital services for local people and their families,
both now and in the future. We welcome your comments and any suggestions you may have
about how we can save money in other areas.
What we’re already doing to save money
The CCGs are small organisations with a single shared management structure across the
three, which is already a cost-effective way of operating, so there are limits to what
additional administrative savings we can make. We have already reduced our limited interim
staffing and general operating costs, but need to look at other ways to make the scale of the
savings required.
The financial pressures and risks to our financial position have already been widely
discussed with you our local partners. Despite the challenges, we have a responsibility to
balance our books and make efficiencies. We have developed a recovery plan to identify
additional savings including:
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working with hospital and community providers to change patient pathways (the route
a patient takes from their first contact with an NHS member of staff (usually their GP),
through referral, to the completion of their treatment) to eliminate unnecessary steps
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managing contracts with all providers to ensure that we are paying the right amount
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making better use of technology, for example introducing web-based ‘e-clinics’ to
improve management of some conditions in primary care
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basing clinical practice on scientific evidence (adhering to evidence-based medicine)
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We are also working closely with our hospital doctors and GPs to make sure we
aren’t funding procedures that we shouldn’t be – such as unnecessary
tonsillectomies for children.
But we need to do more…
We have identified some other areas of NHS spend where we think we could make further
savings of up to £5million a year. These are services and treatments that aren’t life
threatening, as we want to make sure that local people will always be able to get treatment
for conditions like cancer, heart disease and serious mental illness.
To do this we need to make some difficult decisions about other things that the NHS spends
money on at the moment. We are looking at:
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stopping procedures that are purely cosmetic (so things such as breast augmentation
and removing cysts and moles – except for cancer patients)
no longer prescribing some ‘over the counter’ medicines and products (including
multi vitamins, gluten-free food, muscle rubs etc.)
reducing the number of cycles of IVF that we will fund locally
introducing new criteria for weight-loss surgery
stopping funding male and female sterilisation.
We know some of these options – remember, no decisions have been made as yet – won’t
be popular, but we have to look at where we can save money so we can protect those
priority, lifesaving services for all.
Later this week you will receive a link to a document setting out our thinking along with a
questionnaire. We would appreciate your taking time to complete it and tell us what you
think. We will also be out and about across the area, meeting the public, patient groups and
anyone else who would like to talk to us in the coming weeks.
Dr Anju Gupta
Dr Ashok Deshpande
Dr Anita Bhatia
Dr Ravi Goriparthi
Dr Maurice Sanomi
Dr Sarah Heyes
Barking and Dagenham CCG
Havering CCG
Redbridge CCG
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