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Doctors given ‘price list’ in savings drive
Champagne offered to staff who suggest economies
DOCTORS at the Whittington Hospital are to be told the price of every treatment and procedure they order and every drug they prescribe in a dramatic bid to slash costs.
The Archway hospital has to make savings of £11 million by the end of the financial year.
Senior managers have offered bottles of champagne – paid for out of their own pockets – to staff who come up with ways of saving the hospital money. Employees have suggested using both sides of paper when writing letters, turning heating down, shutting off computers when they are not being used, shopping around for cheaper deals on supplies and offering private companies first-aid courses.
But more worryingly for patients, doctors will be told the cost of tests, X-rays and drugs, so they are aware of how they are spending money.
The hospital is compiling a list of prices paid for tests and procedures done outside the hospital and bosses are to do the same for in-house work.
A hospital spokesman said: “At the end of January we had made savings of £7.5 million. These savings are expected to increase sharply during the last two months of the financial year as we reap the rewards of the measures we have put in place, and we are expecting to end the year with a financial surplus.
“If this is £1.3 million, as planned, we will wipe out our historic deficit.”
But doctors’ body, the British Medical Association, said the hospital had to make it clear that introducing “price lists” would not affect patient care.
A spokesman said: “Doctors wish to improve efficiency but their decisions must be based on clinical evidence and what is best for the individual patients, not on a tariff of costs.”
With the first £6 million bill for the hospital’s new £40-million private finance initiative wing due in 2007-08, the hospital is looking at every option to save money.
Staff have already saved the Whittington nearly £8,000 a month – by turning off lights in rooms which are not being used.
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