137,000 NHS posts must go in next five years

A consultancy firm has suggested the NHS in England will have to cut 137,000 jobs if it is to make savings of £20bn by 2014.

McKinsey and Company made the recommendations to the Department of Health in a confidential report that would mean the NHS losing 10% of its workforce.

The document has already been circulated among senior NHS manages, though the DH has moved to say that the report is purely advisory and “does not constitute government policy.”

However, the McKinsey document does make wide-ranging suggestions for cuts with clinical staff and administrators sharing the burden.

The proposed cuts include: 30,800 non-clinical posts, saving £600m; saving £3bn by increasing staff productivity in NHS hospitals; saving £1.9bn by cutting external contracts and supply costs such as waste and food; saving £1.3bn from unneeded appointments and procedures; selling hospital estates to raise £8.3bn.

HSJ reports that the analysis was presented to the DH in March this year and was shared with senior managers at strategic health authority level.

McKinsey indicates acute providers will be hardest hit, with cuts equivalent to up to 38% of their 2008-09 spending by 2013-14, while primary care spending would fall by 13% and community care budgets by 28%.

However, health minister Mike O’Brien played down the significance of the report.

He said: “Advisers advise but minsters will decide after taking a range of advice. The McKinsey work… is not in any sense an NHS plan of action. They are just making some suggestions which will be looked at with many other ideas.”

Share on Facebook