Surprisingly no ambulance stations are being cut unlike with the Police & Fire service cuts where a number of stations will be lost across the whole of London.
Despite Prime Minister David Cameron declaring the Conservatives are “the party of the NHS”, health care budgets in London are being slashed by £ 2 billion. One element of the cuts which has not got the attention it deserves is the London Ambulance Service which will lose £ 53 million of its budget, that is 19 per cent by 2015/16, resulting in 890 jobs cuts, of which 560 jobs will be frontline staff.
This for a service that will have to cope with the hugely increased work load as we see London lose up to 8 A&E’s across the whole of Greater London. We go from 32 A&E’s in 2010 to 24 A&E’s in 2020 and no provision having been made for the vast increase in the numbers of the extra ambulance journeys going to be made to compensate for less local A&E’s, as the closer plans make no provisions. On top of this we have population growth in London expected from the present 8.17 million going up to 9 million by 2020, adding an extra 120,000 to serve in their catchment areas.
Furthermore, its going to cost extra to provide adequate ambulance cover to get people to hospital when we have lost a quarter of A&E departments. The Daily Mail recently estimated that with the closer of Ealing Hospital A&E you can expect an addtional 50 extra trips to other hospitals, which would cost an additional £ 6 million annually. No savings made there clearly with the cuts.
So its only a matter of time before reducing shifts levels and increasing call rates result in tragedy.
A reduction in the number of A&E departments in London is good news, and matches international good practice.
It will keep more of us alive, and give better clinical outcomes, because fewer hospitals with higher turnover means more skilled doctors, in larger teams, and with consultants and diagnostic staff on site 24 hours a day, even at weekends.
If hospital visitors then have to take two boring bus journeys to visit patients – that is unimportant in comparison.
The quick arrival of a “mobile A&E” ambulance, with a paramedic to stabilize patients, before a l(onger) road journey, is the other half of the “fewer A&Es” strategy.
However, this whole vision of the sunny uplands for London’s A&E service is shot to pieces if the ambulance service is cut back.
John,
Your last point is precisely where l am with this issue.
We will have the London Ambulance Service(LAS) coming into London Assembly on the 12th of December to give us evidence of this new world for them as clearly LAS will have to make up for the further movement of patients.
Murad
as a paramedic i can`t see the service copeing with any extra work.
the staff are shattered now.i have reduced my hours for my healths sake.no break in a 12 hour shift for 6 months and you can understand why 85% of frontline crews are not expexted to live to age 65!
target obsessed management only have eyes for times not staff or patients.recent events suggest this comes from the very top however.
Very sorry to hear that Stewart. I’ve been raising these concerns for the LAs as its expected to take up the slack after the closers of A&Es across London yet is also faced with huge cuts in its funding.
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