Mass redundancy in NHS ‘should be avoided’

Making rafts of NHS employees redundant is something that needs to be avoided at all costs, it has been claimed.

Managers of the service, who congregated this week for the NHS Employers’ annual conference, voiced their concerns about the consequences of cutting jobs within the health service.

Sian Thomas, director of NHS Employers, said that managers must display caution and explore every other avenue before making redundancies.

She continued: “The challenge for NHS leaders is to resist redundancies on a large scale and to make the most of natural turnover, eliminate waste and duplication and increase productivity.”

Current cost-cutting targets dictate that the health service is likely to have to make 20 billion pounds of savings between 2011 and 2014.

In other NHS news this week, British GPs rate their country’s health service higher than their foreign counterparts do their own, research conducted by the Commonwealth Fund discovered.