THE TORIES are out to devastate healthcare in London by implementing the Tomlinson report, which recommends closure of seven hospitals at the cost of Purposely designed as a blueprint for massive cutbacks, the document calls for the scrapping of 4,000 beds treating 200,000 patients a year, up to a quarter of the capital's current caseload.
Three casualty units treating over 200,000 accidents and emergencies every year also face health secretary Virginia Bottomley s axe.
Tomlinson - named after an inquiry chaired by experienced hospital hatchetman Sir Bernard Tomlinson - calls for the closure of four teaching hospitals; St Bartholomew's, Middlesex, Charing Cross and either St Thomas' or Guy's.
Three specialist units - the Royal Throat Nose and Ear, Queen Charlotte's maternity and the Tropical Diseases hospitals - also stand to go, London's ambulances while the Royal Marsden and Brompton hospitals would merge.
Tomlinson argues, in pure cost accountant speak, that London COMANOW 'overbedded'. This is another Tory lie. Even current capacity cannot meet the demand for London has lost 8,000 acute (short-stay) beds over the last ten years, almost a third of the total, while waiting lists have soared 30 per cent to hit 133,000. Tomlinson offers no hint as to where the patients displaced by his cuts should go potentially adding tens of thousands to the queue for treatment.
London's hospitals have already been badly damaged by the Conservative's ideologically-driven 'internal market' schemes because of their inflated property prices and other overheads.
Lost contracts to treat patients from other districts and cuts in London health authority budgets will mean a cash shortfall ofat least £80 million this year for inner