AN independent review is to be commissioned into health services in North Yorkshire, where NHS organisations are facing a cash crisis.

The move was revealed as an assurance was sought at the county council health scrutiny committee that there will be no rationing of services to patients while health and primary care trusts work to balance their books by the end of this financial year.

Trusts in the area covered by North and East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire Strategic Health Authority will have to find efficiency savings of between £70m and £80m, despite action already taken this year to make changes in management, freeze recruitment, control drug costs and bring in external organisations to recommend other areas for improvement.

The health scrutiny committee was told that to tackle the deficit, the outgoing health authority would have to examine several issues. These included hospital referral rates, bed occupancy, reduced emergency admissions for patients with long-term conditions by trying to manage them more effectively in their own homes, and costs involved in medicines, management and office systems, which would be targeted more aggressively.

But committee chairman Councillor John Blackie thought some of the proposals sounded like rationing by the back door. He said: "I want a cast-iron guarantee that anyone who presents themselves to their doctor and needs to go to hospital will not have to go through hoops and obstacles.''

The forthcoming independent review was announced by health authority chief executive David Johnson, who said it had been agreed with health trusts that it would be of value.

It would be jointly commissioned by the new Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority, due to begin operating on July 1, and reorganised primary care trusts in North Yorkshire.