A BURTON’S Queen’s Hospital worker has spoken out as rumours abound that beds could be lost as bosses try to make ‘significant efficiency savings’ in the coming months.
The worker, who did not wish to be identified, told the Mail that staff at the Belvedere Road hospital were concerned that a surgical ward was under threat of closure as the trust attempted to make ‘£500,000’ of savings.
A spokesman for the Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust admitted that it was now consulting with staff in its Surgical Division on ways to ‘maintain and improve service quality for patients, while at the same time seeking out inefficiency’.
However, it stopped short of saying that it was proposing to shut a surgical ward, with the loss of numerous vital beds.
The worker who contacted the Mail said: “The hospital has to save half a million pounds and they think it can be done by shutting beds. One of the wards they would be shutting to make the saving would be a surgical ward.
“There is uproar at the hospital. We have been told that there will be no redundancies as staff will be redeployed elsewhere but that’s not really the point.
“We cannot believe this is the right way forward as the hospital already doesn’t have enough beds.
They said: “The NHS is making targets of getting people in for operations after so many weeks of being on the waiting list and a lot of operations are already having to be cancelled.
“The winter pressures are just around the corner and the hospital struggled to cope last winter as it was the busiest ever.
“We have a strong track record of robust financial management which has enabled us to expand the range, quality and availability of services to our patients.
