Health company Serco confirms 30 nurses’ jobs to go in Suffolk

Posted 20/11/2012

More than 30 community nurses are likely to lose their jobs less than two months after a private health company took over the multi-million pound NHS contract to run Suffolk’s community health services. The company, Serco, now runs Suffolk Community Healthcare, having been awarded the contract by Suffolk NHS as part of the Government’s NHS shake-up. It also intends to sack nine specialist and district nurses, 18 general health worker posts and eight physiotherapists.

The union, Unison, said such cuts would have a ‘massive impact’ on health services in Suffolk, and it feared patients would suffer. Serco claimed it had been ‘clear and transparent’ about its intention to invest in technology and increase efficiency – and argued it can improve community healthcare in the process.

Ashtons Legal’s head of medical negligence, Sandra Patton, is contemptuous of such claims. “Companies like Serco use wonderful phrases like providing ‘an innovative delivery model’, but whatever phrase they use it always means sacking people to make money. In this case they are claiming they had been clear and transparent about ‘investing in technology’, which presumably we’re supposed to take as a euphemism for getting rid of staff.  

Are we really expected to believe that they will improve health services by sacking nurses? Given that logic then presumably if they sack them all we’ll have a world class health service. Whatever Serco say, clearly patients will suffer. They are going to have to wait longer to see a doctor or a nurse, and the quality of service provided will suffer.”