OXFORDSHIRE Clinical Commissioning Group has to listen to the voices urging caution over its plans to save money by ditching thousands of the patient transfer journeys it currently funds.

The CCG is under financial pressure and is going to consult on changing the criteria for ambulance journeys for patients to attend things such as hospital treatments.

It believes it can save about £325,000 by axing about 34,000 journeys of patients it considers not the most serious cases.

That the CCG is considering this cannot be criticised. It was created as a ‘new broom’ to look at how our health service operates and decide what should be funded.

However, there are legitimate concerns that the CCG is embarking on these decisions when it has hardly had the most stable of births in terms of people staying in senior posts. Yesterday it also emerged the medical director Mary Keenan is leaving.

It is unable to give clear and definitive criteria for those ‘at risk’, but it needs to formulate this before it goes to consultation.

This may affect thousands of people, some of whom are vulnerable, and there can be no risk that any cuts go further than was originally intended because the initial framework was too woolly.