Letter: Cure for the NHS

Sir: You report that staff shortages and lack of extra wards and operating sessions were to blame for patients having to be transferred to private hospitals("Private sector helps NHS to meet targets", 30 December).

In most hospitals, wards have been shut down and fewer nurses employed as deliberate policy to save money. The bed situation is made worse by emergency admissions - particularly medical admissions in surgical beds, which reach epidemic proportions during winter, thus interfering further with surgical lists. The disastrous "internal market" has caused diversion of money from NHS hospitals, made worse by hordes of "managers" with the single aim of balancing books at all costs.

The proposed changes by Mr Dobson will make sure that this state of affairs will continue and is likely to worsen. The NHS trust and health authority appointees have become entrenched. The smokescreen of new ideas and jargon will make sure that fundamental problems of inadequate funding and bureaucratic stranglehold are not dealt with.

T R KAPUR FRCS

Newcastle,

Staffordshire