Essex Hospital To Lose Up To 250 Staff

13 July 2011, 12:33 | Updated: 13 July 2011, 15:49

The Princess Alexandra in Harlow has to save £17 million this year and about £22 million over the next 2 years.

It means up to 250 people will be made redundant and around 60 beds at the hospital will go under the plans.

'Building for Excellence’ aims to ensure that the hospital will continue to provide the same levels of patient service with fewer resources, while enabling significant savings to be made.

Improvements to patient care are being made through:

• Avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions by discharging A&E patients who don’t need an overnight stay
• Reducing the average length of stay 
• Reducing the significant number of missed outpatient appointments 
• Reducing the hospital’s use of bank nurses and other agency staff.

The Trust has this week started inviting staff to come forward for voluntary redundancy.

Trust Chief Executive, Melanie Walker, said: “We are facing unprecedented challenges in the NHS and the Trust is determined to address these to ensure the future of PAH as a top performing local hospital.

“Our hospital has many strengths thanks to the commitment of our staff. Now we want to go further. We intend to provide the best for our patients and protect our services but we can only do that if we tackle the financial issues we face now.

“There are real opportunities for higher-quality, more efficient services. Some tough decisions will have to be made but our doctors and nurses are working with us to make them. Our focus remains on the needs of patients, so we are concentrating our money-saving efforts on administrative, managerial and other support functions, to protect the front line.”