THE County Hospital must “punch above its weight” if it is to keep its full range of services, says the chairman of Hereford Hospitals Trust.

Mark Curtis believes the recession will hit the NHS hard next year and, if the hospital got its finances right this year, success would follow in 2010/11. But, he warned, the opposite is also true.

“If we get 2009/10 wrong, there will be a real possibility the County Hospital will be changed significantly to make itself financially viable – services and jobs would be lost,” said Mr Curtis.

His remarks introduce a proposed business plan being considered by the trust board this week. He said 500 hospital staff had contributed to the plan to decide what could be achieved over the next five years.

He said the trust could miss last year’s financial target by £550,000 and now is the time to sort out the finances.

Mr Curtis believes the hospital could improve quality while reducing costs. Projects are being put in place to redesign the way elective and emergency patients “flow”

through the hospital.

This includes increasing theatre throughput and improving discharge processes, making better use of the new hospital as well as older parts owned by the trust, getting better value from suppliers and reducing overheads.

“None of these will be easy.

Reducing our overheads will present difficulties for the whole organisation and very real pain for some members of staff,” said Mr Curtis.

But there was no alternative.

The Governement explicitly required NHS hospitals to operate as a business, added Mr Curtis.

“The days we could argue Hereford is different and hope our size and rural geography would provide us with a dispensation from the effects of changes in other parts of the NHS in England are over,” he said. “It is no secret that keeping the full range of district general hospital services in Hereford requires the County Hospital to ‘punch above its weight’.”

He concluded it was in the hospital’s own hands to make a success of the coming year and staff were equal to the very best the NHS had to offer.

“The board is looking to the chief executive, executive management team and business units to enable and support staff,” he said.