Forum topic: Resisting rationing of NHS services

More pain for patients... unless...

Unless, that is, we all come together to stop the Enfield NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (C.C.G.) - the main provider of health services in the Borough - upping the criteria before we can be treated by the NHS for a host of medical complaints, ranging from hearing loss to hernia problems, from the need for knee replacements to bunion surgery, prolapse womb to gallstones.

This so-called Adherence to Evidence-based Medicine project (AEBM) is but the latest in a string of health service cuts which, if implemented, the Over 50s Forum believes will undermine the founding principles of the NHS launched on July 5 1948.

These were that good healthcare should be available to all regardless of wealth; that it meets the needs of everyone free at the point of delivery; and healthcare should be based on clinical need, not the ability to pay.

Because we believe these principles are under threat as never before, the Forum is calling a special meeting - open to everyone sharing our concerns about health services in Enfield - at the Southgate Beaumont Care Home, 15 Canon Hill, N14 7DJ on Tuesday 15 August at 10am for a 10.30 start. The venue is a short walk from Southgate underground station and almost opposite the Cherry Tree and on the 121 and 299 bus routes.

The Governing Board of Enfield’s CCG will be meeting in mid-September and may well decide to go-ahead with the AEBM programme unless we make our voices heard loud and clear - as many people have done at the minimal public consultation meetings held since March 1. The CCG wanted to end the consultation on March 30 and implement their changes in June.

Labour and Conservative councillors joined us in blocking this timetable. Had it been implemented, Enfield residents would have been the pacemakers for this misleadingly -called AEBM being introduced by all our North Central London linked CCGs in Barnet, Haringey, Camden and Islington. covering some 1.4 million people.

AEBM is misleading because we have neither seen nor heard of any authoritative supporting evidence from any consultants at local hospitals for the raising of thresholds over a range of medical conditions which, in effect, undermines the role of our GPs and consultants in exercising their clinical judgement as to when a patient needs referral and treatment.

We know only too well that the NHS nationally is under-funded and we know Enfield CCG is under intense pressure to make “efficiency savings” to balance the books and make inroads into its £37.2 million deficit burden - a burden imposed by years of under-funding a borough with an increasing population and an increasingly ageing population.

NHS bosses are warning of projected losses of £234 million this year across the five North Central London boroughs rising to an uncosted £811 million by 2020/21 unless we accept their “efficiency savings” plans that can only undermine the NHS as we have known it.

But the Forum does not accept that the answer lies in patients having to suffer in silence while their medical condition worsens until some arbitrary- imposed criteria is reached that warrants NHS intervention.

IF the CCG gets away with its AEBM plans more cuts will follow as sure as night follows day because the pressures and financial demands on the NHS are growing by the hour. Just consider how life expectancy has changed since the NHS was created 69 years ago.

The NHS is a miracle - the world’s largest health service funded by general taxation - has adapted to all the new developments and medical discoveries. Hip and knee replacements unknown in 1948 , more people than ever now recovering from strokes, cancer and heart disease.

So, the financial pressures are bound to grow. As a nation we have to find a way to meet the ever-growing demand for healthcare - not seek solutions by cutting patient services or compelling more people to pay for a privatised service.

The Forum executive does not believe the answer lies in cuts and rationing health services as we have known them.That is why we are calling this special meeting to hear your views on the future of health services in Enfield: Tuesday August 15th at 10am at Southgate Beaumont Care Home. Cannon Hill (opposite the Cherry Tree).