Surgery cuts reduced due to extra £800k funding
BBCReductions in some on-island elective surgery procedures that Manx Care had begun rolling out will be reversed after it received an extra £800,000 from the government.
The health care provider's board had agreed a new raft of cost saving measures in mid-January to cut a £15m overspend, which the Council of Ministers was then made aware of.
Manx Care has now said while some planned reductions would be reversed, cuts including a "pause" on non-urgent off-island appointments would still go ahead.
But former health minister Lawrie Hooper, who made the original list of cuts public, has raised concerns about those whose appointments had already cancelled.
The health care body said it continued to "face significant financial pressures" on finances as a result of off-island referrals, appointments and procedures, along with the rising costs of delivering clinal and social care services.
It confirmed time-critical, cancer and urgent surgeries would continue but the new measures would see non-urgent procedures and appointments with NHS partners in Liverpool and Manchester paused until 31 March.
Manx Care said it had asked the UK hospitals to "review individual patient pathways with a view to discharging them from specialist care, converting appointments to virtual or repatriating care back to Manx Care teams".
Patients who have had operations disrupted will have them rescheduled after April.
Hooper said it had been "really worrying" that "people were telling me they were having procedures cancelled," despite a public statement made by the Health Minister Claire Christian in Tynwald last week that no services "would be under threat".
He said the reason he felt he needed to release the details was because "it was within the public interest" and the government had not been forthcoming on the issue.
The former health minister also raised concerns patients would have "lost their surgery slots", which would take "planning and time to reinstated", meaning some patients would face delays despite the U-turn on procedures.
Welcoming the extra funding from the Treasury, Manx Care chief executive Teresa Cope said "as many planned procedures and appointments as possible over the next two months".
"None of this is palatable for us and we understand it may cause a great deal of anxiety", she said
The efficiencies were part of an ongoing programme of work to "operate within the financial parameters we have been set" as well as keeping the health service's deficit down, while making "minimal reductions to frontline services", Ms Cope said.
But she stressed the moves were "in no way connected" to the recently settled pay dispute with the British Medical Association as the two areas were funded in "very different ways".
The Department of Health and Social Care and the Isle of Man government have been approached by the BBC for a comment.
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