HEALTH Secretary Andrew Lansley has spoken of the changes Colchester hospitals will need to cope with increasing pressure and fewer staff.

He said NHS services had to be more efficient, but dismissed claims fewer jobs meant lower care standards.

And he said in the future hospitals will have to take more responsibility for patients once they are discharged.

Mr Lansley made the comments during a visit to Colchester General Hospital yesterday to open the £2million Iceni training and research centre for pioneering keyhole (laparoscopic) surgery.

He said demand on NHS services was expected to rise by six per cent next year, with the budget increasing by just 3 per cent.

Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust announced a few days ago it will have to shed 510 jobs between now and 2013. A third of those will be clinical posts.

Mr Lansley said: “Efficiency isn’t about reducing capacity. At the heart of what I and others are setting out to do is reduce administration and back office work, and support resources on frontline and clinical services.”

But he added if Colchester hospitals did have to lose clinical staff, those positions could be transferred to the community, where he envisaged there would be more nurse practitioners, district nurses and health visitors.

“From a patient point of view, I don’t think it will make much difference to the way people receive care,” he said.

“It might even be an advantage. We want it to become the case where people are only coming to hospital for something like specialist care.”

He said he would be introducing an onus on hospitals to take responsibility for patients for 30 days after discharge.

“Colchester needs to see itself not just as a hospital provider, but as a healthcare provider,” added Mr Lansley.

When the Gazette asked how a hospital would cope with fewer staff in times of pressure like the winter flu outbreaks, he responded: “Even when we have situations like we did with swine flu, the critical care beds and the NHS did cope.

“We have more critical care beds and the NHS did extremely well on the very few occasions someone was admitted and had to be transferred.”

Consultant surgeon Tan Arulampalam said developing procedures like keyhole surgery were important ways of becoming more efficient, because it meant less complications and shorter hospital stays.

He said: “The reality is we have problems like any other hospital. But we are using what we are good at, like laparoscopic surgery, to our advantage.

“People are still going to be sick and it’s our job to continue to deliver first-class healthcare. But we will be able to deliver it because of the way we have re-organised ourselves.”