The massive cost of thoughtless NHS maternity cuts…
Exasperated partner and clinical negligence specialist Linda Levison urges the NHS cost-cutters to think more carefully before they prune …
Today in The Times there was an article about the forthcoming inquest into how a mother apparently bled to death following an elective caesarean section to deliver twins at the Croydon University Hospital. It seems that a lack of trained staff may well have contributed to what happened.
This brings to mind a conversation I had recently with a senior midwife in a different part of the country. She told me she had reported to her NHS Trust that they needed to nearly double the numbers of midwives employed in order to provide a safe level of care in the Maternity Units. And that the Trust’s response was that they ‘couldn’t afford the extra staff salaries’.
I suppose the reality is that staff salaries will come under a separate budget from that set aside for looking after and providing long-term care for brain-damaged babies and children with cerebral palsy.
But the net result of saving the extra staff salaries is likely to be more brain-damaged babies, which will ultimately cost the NHS far more than has been saved in salary bills. This is without taking account of the devastation and heartbreak of the families involved.
Could the people responsible for taking all these cost-cutting measures in the NHS not start to have some joined-up thinking?