Warning over drop in NHS staffing levels

Campaigners have warned of threats to services after figures reveal levels of community health staff – including nurses – in north London have been reduced by 15 per cent over the past year.

Department of Health figures show that for the now-defunct North Central London NHS primary care trust,which included the boroughs of Enfield, Barnet, Haringey, Camden and Islington, 61 nurses and other staff such as dieticians were made redundant between April 2012 and April 2013 as it was closed down.

Community nurses are those not based at a hospital and the figures include mental health nurses.

As part of the government’s NHS reform programme, primary care trusts and strategic health authorities were abolished last month.

Instead, control of budgets has been handed to clinical commissioning groups, made up of GPs at a local level, and the newly-created body NHS England.

The Royal College of Nursing, representing nursing staff, said that taking into account those who left of their own accord, North Central London had lost 15 per cent of its community health staff since April 2012.

Health campaigners warned that the cuts could lead to a drop in the quality of care, worsening conditions for health staff and added pressures on hospitals at a time when the borough is facing a loss of services at Chase Farm, in The Ridgeway.

Alev Cazimoglu, chairwoman of Enfield Council’s health and wellbeing scrutiny panel, said: “With A&E services being removed at Chase Farm Hospital at the end of the year, what we need to see is an improvement to primary care services.

“Community nursing primarily affects the elderly the most and these people will turn up at A&E departments in increased numbers, adding to further pressure on local hospitals.

“The recent Francis Report into the failings at Stafford Hospital found there is a clear correlation between number of nurses and quality of care.

“This really is a false economy and it does not tally the primary health care strategy.”

A spokeswoman for the Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust told the Advertiser: “From our perspective, we keep our staffing levels within our community services under review to ensure that we are able tomeet the needs of patients referred to our services.”

Figures published by the Department of Health show that in April 2012, there were 5,865 community health NHS staff in London.

By April 2013, 4,849 of those staff were employed in the health and social care system – a drop of 17 per cent.

Source North London Today