Twisting the knife yet further into the wounds of Worcestershire's health service, the Worcestershire Acute Hospital's Trust (WAHT) has published its urgent finance and service review, designed to tackle the alarming £20m annual deficit. The paper, produced by consultants Finnamore Management Consultants, looks at various cost savings, but residents in Worcestershire - and particularly Redditch - will see the proposals as nothing more than cuts in service.
The significant proposals suggest that A+E services in Redditch will be moved to Worcester, as will cancer care, obstetrics, gynae and paeds, emergency surgical services and critical care. This will leave the Alexander Hospital a shadow of its former self.
Full maternity services will be concentrated in Worcester, leaving just a single northern Worcestershire birthing unit, delivering 700 births a year. The report does not make it clear whether the birthing unit will be at Kidderminster or Redditch.
Ironically, the report does point out that Kidderminster Treatment Centre is under utilised and Kidderminster will see more elective treatment options if the proposals go ahead.
However, the report identifies a whopping £16.3 million of costs savings from improved productivity and a further £2.8 million from recovering money owed for treatments supplied.
Speaking about the report, Mark Garnier, Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for Wyre Forest said: "People in Worcestershire must be gob smacked about this. Yet again, residents are being ignored and services are being cut. For the last eighteen months I, and my Conservative colleagues, have been arguing that huge amounts of taxpayer's money is being wasted. In the last 8 years, spending on the NHS has doubled, yet frontline services are being cut - again!
"We all know that the money has been largely spent on managers and bureaucrats, but it seems that even the armies on non productive pen pushers are standing idle. That a management consultant can identify £19.1 million of bad management inefficiencies beggars belief.
"Notwithstanding the birthing unit in Kidderminster - a cause that I feel very strongly in favour of - it seems that Kidderminster may benefit from these proposals. However, whilst I have always maintained that I will fight tirelessly for more services to return to our hospital, services should return because it is the right thing to do - not because money is being wasted by bureaucrats and cuts must be made elsewhere.
"I will not make the obvious cynical comment that this report has been left until after the general election, but residents across the West Midlands must be furious that this government takes more of their money to spend on headline grabbing spending pledges whilst front line services are being cut. And make no mistake - these are cuts and nothing else.