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Sick note: Leeds hospitals axe 700 jobs
HOSPITALS in Leeds are set to shed 700 jobs this financial year.
Already staff numbers have been cut by 277, mainly frontline medics and clerical workers.
Now hospital bosses face having to cut another 400 posts – while treating more patients to bring in millions of pounds in urgently needed income.
If all 700 jobs disappear, the 14,500-strong workforce at the city's hospitals will have been cut by 5 per cent in 12 months.
No compulsory redundancies are planned as the fall will be from employees not being replaced.
Managers are walking a clinical tightrope in a desperate bid to balance the books.
The hospitals trust is currently 3.6m in the red but that could rise to 7.2m by March unless drastic action is taken.
Strict spending controls have been in place and in the first six months of the year 277 posts disappeared, most of which were nurses and midwives or office staff. In the latest saving drive the equivalent of another 400 full-time roles could go. Only crucial vacancies will be filled.
Finance director Neil Chapman said: "The average number of leavers means that this can be achieved without resorting to compulsory redundancies."
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust also wants to bring in 382m by treating patients, 17m more than in the first six months of the year.
Concerns about the effect on services for patients were raised at a meeting of hospital directors, but trust chairman Mike Collier said: "We just cannot afford a deterioration in the safety and quality of care that we provide."
Earlier this year the YEP revealed that the trust had a total funding gap of 54m.Through savings, controls on spending and bringing extra money in by seeing more patients, they came up with a plan to plug the gap.
However income has been lower than expected.
The hospitals trust has to break even to be awarded the Foundation Trust status it is aiming for.
Meanwhile Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs hospitals in Wakefield, Pontefract and Dewsbury, is predicting to balance its books by the end of March. Last year it broke even for the second year running after a history of financial problems.
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Weather for Leeds
Sunday 12 February 2012
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