10:36am Friday 9th April 2010
By David Lindsell
Kingston Hospital has won a battle for £2m of funding, as the NHS seeks to save money by diverting patients to walk-in centres and GP surgeries.
NHS Kingston Primary Care Trust (PCT), which holds the purse strings for patients from the borough, wants to reduce the number of follow up appointments at the hospital, ultimately reducing the amount of money Kingston Hospital will get each year.
But the disagreements were so great NHS London was been called in to arbitrate between the two sides, and this week decided the proposed cuts were too great and found in favour of the hospital.
Neither party was prepared to discuss the value or the level of reduction in appointments but board papers for the PCT revealed the figure was about £2m.
St George’s Hospital in Tooting is also being challenged on about £1m of funding.
A spokesman for Kingston PCT said: “It’s standard practice for commissioners to negotiate contract prices with providers to ensure value for money for patients, and we’ve been in ongoing discussions with Kingston Hospital to agree the contract for the coming year.
“Despite both sides working hard to reach final agreement, this issue was referred to NHS London for an arbitration meeting held last week.”
A spokesman for the hospital said: “We believe and argued that the first appointment/follow up appointment ratios should be benchmarked against a representative peer group of the best performing district general hospitals in England, on a speciality by speciality basis to ensure that we continue to aspire to best practice and of matching the best performing hospitals in the country.
“NHS London has now heard the arbitration and the outcome will be reported formally to the trust board at its next meeting.”
John Lister, of Health Emergency and the author of the British Medical Association report On the Brink, said: “To simply say we’re going to reduce the number of people who are going to hospital flies in the face of reality. It is just to save money. It is health rationing.”
Kingston PCT, which has fought its way back from a £22m overspend three years ago, plans to use the savings to make up for an extra £2.6m of hospital spending in 2009-10 and 2011-12 because of population growth in Kingston.
It expects to shift £2.2m away from hospitals into primary care by 2011, rising to £4m in 2012.
Earlier this year the hospital won a vital arbitration battle which could have seen it lose £13.6m, after Kingston PCT began to query more than 5,000 operations and appointments a month.
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