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Threat to jobs as NHS chiefs look to make £56m savings

Health bosses have not ruled out the possibility of more redundancies at Rochdale Infirmary as they look to make further cuts.

Last month the Observer revealed the Pennine Acute Trust (PAT), which runs the hospital, is making £56m of savings before April – £13m more than originally planned.

This week chiefs said no final decision on job cuts has been made but admitted they are looking at ‘all the options available’.

A spokesperson said: "The public sector, including the NHS and local councils, are facing huge financial challenges.

"Nationally the NHS needs to save £20bn by 2015.

"This year the trust had to make £43m of savings and we have found £41m of that so far, all without affecting the quality of care we provide to our patients.

"On top of this, however, our local Primary Care Trusts who pay us for our services are sending less patients to our hospitals for certain planned outpatient and surgical procedures to the value of £21m.

"This means we have been given less money to spend on our service and therefore need to reduce our budget further by that amount this year.

"Once we work out all the options available to us and the implications of what these further cuts will mean to our services, we will make sure that our staff and unions are the first to know.

"No decision has been made."

Last year the trust announced it was cutting 1,000 jobs – more than 10 per cent of the workforce - as part of plans to drastically reduce its budget by 2015.

Gary Owen, regional officer for Unite, is concerned about the impact more cuts will have.

He said: "Any further reductions on the back of what we have experienced on top of the last 18 months will have an unavoidable impact on the services the trust offers.

"Are they really going to be in a position to run the services they currently do with more cuts?

"We will work with the trust to make sure there are not compulsory redundancies if they do have to make reductions.

"Even then our concern is what is left behind."

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Close Rochdale Hospital down completley,move everything to Oldham ,except the top heavy management team,the savings would be more than enough,as Oldham has its own overpaid underworked ,management team.Simple,as the tv advert says.

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Many jobs could go if they re-organised their workforce. There are many departments where one senior manager is managing one mangaer who is themselves managing one staff!!! I mean they need 3 hierachies of management who do nothing to manage the one staff who does the work!!! Get rid of the managers, and the monies will be saved.

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I thought they already had just about....

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EVEN BETTER, DEMOLISH THE HOSPITAL AND TURN IT INTO A BIG GRAVE YARD. HOW MANY HAVE PASSED AWAY SO FAR.

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The current status of Rochdale Infirmary is that of an outpatients department, urgent care centre, Renal Unit,X ray dept,endoscopy Clinical assessment unit, Theatres and day surgery.These are the most significant although there may be one or two i've missed. There is little staff there as it is and more than likely they will be redeployed as more services will be earmarked for a move to another site! In my opinion it seems likely that the X ray,day surgery and endoscopy and theatres will be next to close and services moved to Oldham. Because there were people in Rochdale dismissive or just down right derogatory towards the Infirmary as is Rochdalebornandbread !! who,I suspect doesn't live locally ! The decision has been relatively easy for the P.A.T executives to make those that earn their salary here, an addition to the dole queue.

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