Hospital Reconfiguration: an ippr briefing

The new Chief Executive of the NHS, David Nicholson, has signalled a wave of reconfigurations of hospital services. The ippr provides a question and answer briefing to explain this story.

Our hospitals need to change and ippr research suggests that around one in four general hospitals will be seriously affected. For too long, politicians and senior NHS managers have been unwilling to have this debate with the public.

This should not just be about short-term cost-cutting. Bringing our health service up to world-class standards will mean closing some hospital units such as A&E departments in order to provide safer, higher quality care in more specialist centres, and providing more routine care closer to people's homes.