HEALTH chiefs at one of the biggest hospital trusts in the region have been told to find £80m of efficiency savings – £1 in every £6 they spend on patient care.

County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust insists the savings could be found without cutting frontline services, by treating people “closer to home”, rather than on hospital wards.

But the news alarmed two Labour MPs in the county, one of whom – Bishop Auckland’s Helen Goodman – said the shake-up was catastrophic.

The Labour MP said the order to find £80m of savings broke the Conservatives’ election promise to protect NHS spending and pledged to raise the issue with Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

There are also growing doubts that the savings can be made when huge sums will be spent on an NHS revolution that will axe primary care trusts (PCTs) and hand budgets to groups of GPs.

Ms Goodman said: “I think this is catastrophic. People have a right to know what is going on and that this is not what David Cameron promised at the General Election.”

Grahame Morris, the Easington MP who sits on the health select committee, said: “It is a very worrying time for patients and staff. I think we can anticipate a train crash of epic proportions.”

But Stephen Eames, the trust’s chief executive, sought to calm fears of painful decisions to come, saying: “I would like to reassure our local communities that this is not about cutting frontline services. All of these savings will be reinvested directly into frontline care so that we can continue to improve the quality of services we provide, the experience of patients, and, most importantly, ensure that taxpayers’ money is invested wisely.”

From April next year, the management of communitybased health services will be transferred from PCTs to hospital trusts to create a “seamless pathway of care for patients”, Mr Eames said.

And he added: “We know, from patient feedback, there is a pressing need to move more services out of hospital and closer to people’s homes.”

The trust, which runs acute hospitals in Durham City, Darlington and Bishop Auckland, has been told to find £80m of efficiencies by 2015, which is 16 per cent of its annual budget of £500m.

At four per cent a year, the scale of the task is in line with the £20bn that must be found by the NHS across the country – despite the coalition’s pledge to increase the NHS budget overall.

NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson admitted the task required had “never been achieved in the history of the NHS or any healthcare system in the world”.

Elsewhere in the country, trusts are reported to be withdrawing IVF treatment to new patients, stopping minor surgery and delaying nonurgent hospital treatment.

But a Department of Health spokesman said: “Reform isn’t an option, it’s a necessity. We have been clear that the NHS must cut back on bureaucracy, not on frontline care.”