NHS staff in Leicestershire and Rutland could be moved around to meet surge in demand this winter

NHS staff in the Leicester and Rutland health system will be moved around to meet surge in demand this coming winter and some services could be stood down.

Head of urgent and emergency care for the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board Sarah Louise Smith, explained the new way of working at a Rutland County Council scrutiny meeting on Thursday (October 13).

Each year health boards are required to lay out a plan for dealing with extra demand in the winter period and the health boss said this year NHS England had called for a lot more detail and had expected planning to start earlier than in other years.

The NHS is undergoing a huge overhaul under the Labour health secretary Wes Streeting, which has seen ICB’s across the country merge and also jobs at management levels reduce.

Ms Smith said: “We find ourselves at points having to move staff around the system. So an example will be that in a couple of weeks time we will see the usual bronchiolitis respiratory surge in our emergency departments. It happens every year. It’s cyclical, at which point our children’s emergency department will need more clinicians in there.

“It’s been a struggle in previous years. So last year we started a process to look at how we formalised the process. So we now have workforce sharing agreements, we have memorandums of understanding and we have that agreement that there will be points at which we might need to stand down services and move those staff with the appropriate skill set somewhere else for a day or two to manage that surge in demand.”

At the meeting Coun Ray Payne (Lib Dem) raised concerns about recent changes that mean under 75s are no longer eligible for covid vaccinations unless they have certain other conditions.

The ICB’s deputy chief operator Debra Mitchell said this was a national decision.

Coun Payne said he had been refused a covid vaccination.

“I was there with about 20 other people and there was an enormous amount of confusion and not a little bit of anger when people were told. You could hear the disappointment.”