The NHS has been accused of keeping the public in the dark about controversial plans to plug a £250m funding gap by rationing services.
The crowdfunded campaign group 38 Degrees submitted freedom of information (FOI) requests to the government, NHS leaders as well as trusts and clinical commissioning groups in the 13 areas affected but all except two refused to release details of planned changes.
Leaked proposals from three areas have already revealed plans including downgrading or closing A&Es and extending waiting times for operations, and 38 Degrees says the public is entitled to know what else is in store.
But it received a number of responses claiming it was not in the public interest to publish them, prompting the group to accuse the government and NHS bosses of planning major service changes and closures without consulting local people.
Holly Maltby, from 38 Degrees, said: “This new evidence reveals NHS bosses are being forced to rush through cuts and closures so quickly they are ignoring their own rules for involving patients. The health service is struggling to cope with a lack of funding, but plugging the funding gap through secret cuts isn’t in the best interests of patients.
“The NHS belongs to all of us – so all of us should get a say in any changes to our local services. That’s why some 240,000 38 Degrees members are calling for full public disclosure of plans for each of the 13 regions being forced to make deeper cuts.”
The 13 hospital trusts, which are among those expected to record some of the service’s biggest deficits, have been instructed by NHS England and NHS Improvement to “think the unthinkable” under the “capped expenditure process” (CEP) as the health service seeks to balance its books in the current financial year.
The areas were originally told to make an extra £500m of savings by the end of March 2018 over and above those already planned. But last month the NHS England chief executive, Simon Stevens, told the groups that £250m of cuts had been identified, indicating that the CEP may settle for a reduced amount.
The prospect of large cuts in the CEP has caused outrage. NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, said that restricting care and closing hospital units was “neither realistic nor reasonable”.
The complaints by 38 Degrees mirror those made by the doctors’ union the British Medical Association last month. It too was frustrated in its attempts to gain information about the CEP through FOI requests and accused NHS bosses of shrouding the process in “totally unacceptable secrecy”.
Both say the refusals contradict NHS England guidance, which says “involving people, communities and stakeholders in developing plans is the right thing to do”.
The Guardian revealed in June the threat of closures and increased waiting times under proposals to save £183m across five London boroughs under the CEP programme. There is also concern that cancer treatment may be delayed if the NHS in Cheshire reduces the number of diagnostic endoscopies it undertakes by 25%, and that patients in east Surrey and Sussex may be denied angiograms and angioplasty surgery as part of the CEP savings drive.
An NHS England spokesman accused 38 Degrees of “a rehash of months-old claims”. He added: “The NHS has always had to live within the budget that parliament allocates, and the usual requirements for public consultation on any suggested major service reconfigurations of course continue to apply. However, it’s grossly unfair if a small number of areas in effect take more than their fair share at the expense of other people’s hospital services, GP care and mental health clinics elsewhere in the country.”