NHS managers are being told to find land they can sell off to raise money for frontline services.
Deputy NHS chief executive David Flory has asked trusts to earmark surplus land that could be used to build affordable homes.
A spokesman said 'financial accounting procedures' guarantee trusts reinvest the money in patient care.
According to the department, almost eight per cent of NHS space is under-used, which could be worth £2.5 billion over the next five years, the equivalent of 50,000 nurses.
Health minister Simon Burns said: 'If we want to modernise the NHS and make it more efficient, then we need to be proactive and identify land that is no longer used or needed.
'Any money raised from surplus land will be used to benefit patients.
'We are increasing investment in the NHS by £12.5 billion, but faced with an ageing population and rising costs of treatments, the NHS needs to be smarter with its resources.'
The announcement comes after the Government said in June it wanted to release enough public land to build up to 100,000 new homes by 2015.
The NHS is one of the largest owners of public-sector land.
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: 'We fully support all attempts to make the NHS more efficient and this is exactly the sort of initiative which the Department of Health should be undertaking to meet the £20 billion efficiency target without affecting patient care and services.
'Unfortunately, some local trusts are taking a short-term approach, slashing jobs and services at an alarming rate.
'We have already identified 40,000 NHS posts that are earmarked to be lost across the UK and a study of 21 trusts found that more than half of job losses were frontline clinical posts.
'Nurses and patients want to see hard evidence that these efficiency savings are being reinvested back into frontline services.
'There is currently very little evidence to show this is actually happening.'
No comments:
Post a Comment