By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
While U.S. lawmakers argue over funding of “women’s reproductive health” services, cutting these services may one day be inevitable in a government-run health care system such as the UK’s, where recent budget constraints are forcing them to ration these – and many other services – in an effort to control costs.
The Independent is reporting that budget woes in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) are causing some doctors to ration contraceptives to save money. Some of the nation’s largest contraception and abortion providers such as Marie Stopes International and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service say local health chiefs are backing away prescribing some longer-acting contraceptives instead of the pill or condoms “on cost rather than clinical grounds.”
In addition, hospitals in some areas have stopped doing abortions except in emergency cases and are handing these services over to private clinics such as Marie Stopes.
But sexual health is not the only area of health care being affected by the country’s mounting budget shortfalls.
The number of patients who were forced to wait more than four hours to be seen in a hospital emergency room grew steadily over the past year, with the number of those who were still waiting for a bed four hours after admittance to a hospital doubling between April and December of 2010.
In addition, the number of emergency operations cancelled by hospitals in England has risen by a quarter in the past seven months to almost 250, the Independent reports. One in eight patients are being denied a referral made by their family doctor for services that include hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, allergy services, IVF and removing tonsils. Some NHS systems are planning to prevent patients who smoke, and those with a body mass index of more than 35, from having routine hip and knee operations.
According to the Guardian, there has also been a rise in the number of “referral management centers” in the UK. These centers screen referrals by general practitioners to assess their “clinical appropriateness” before treatment is allowed to continue.
Budget shortfalls are also adversely affecting health care staff. In response to growing discontent among nurses, UK’s Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is planning to meet with members of the Royal College of Nurses’ at their annual congress this week. Described as a “listening exercise,” Lansley will meet with angry nurses who are suffering from job cuts, pension losses and the slashing of services.
“Almost all nurses surveyed – 95 per cent – said they were working extra hours to compensate for staff shortages, with more than one in five doing so every shift,” the Independent reports.
“One in five of those questioned said that in the past six months they had come to work while feeling too ill to be there. Two-thirds said they were unable to spare the time while working to get a drink of water.”
The government recently passed the Health and Social Care Bill of 2011, which is designed to modernize and reform the NHS, but implementation of the bill was recently “paused” by squabbling among members of opposing political parties in that county.
But even if it was implemented today, Professor Martin Rowland from Cambridge University, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, said: “Any benefits from the reforms could take seven to 10 years, and history suggests that governments do not have the patience, nerve or opportunity to see things through the disruption.”
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