HEALTH bosses in North Yorkshire are now deciding how to deliver far-reaching savings following recommendations that bed numbers must be cut.

The loss of 200 hospital beds in York and North Yorkshire was only one of the “essential” measures needed to help the local NHS authority save £230 million by 2015, according to an independent report published in August on behalf of the region’s strategic health authority.

Former NHS Wakefield chief executive Alan Wittrick will become the full-time director for the project, with other members of the project to be agreed later. Mr Wittrick said: “One of the first tasks is clearly going to be to agree the governance arrangements and short-term deliverables.

“To this end, a meeting of the chief executives of health and social care organisations in North Yorkshire will be convened in November to sign off the proposals.”

The North Yorkshire Review was led by NHS Confederation medical director Hugo Mascie-Taylor. The panel included representatives from local authorities, the voluntary sector, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, as well as the NHS and GP clinical commissioning groups.