Ethics in the digital workplace
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
The three main hospitals in Leicester are to close up to eight wards and cut 900 jobs over two years to make savings of 90 million GBP, bosses have announced.
The chief executive of University Hospitals of Leicester Trust said cuts would mainly affect office staff, but 200 compulsory job cuts were expected.
Peter Reading said on Wednesday the trust would continue to provide excellent care. The savings will be made by patients spending less time in hospital. More people will be treated in the community under the new plans, he added. Savings were necessary to tackle a predicted deficit of 32 million GBP across health organisations in Leicestershire and further savings beyond this figure were required, said Mr Reading.
Savings of 35 million GBP had been made across the trust in the last 12 months but a redoubling of effort was necessary for the hospitals to become even more efficient, he said.
The trust runs Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester General Hospital and Glenfield Hospital. Wholesale closure of wards would take place.
'We will over time close whole wards starting with those wards where the quality of the environment is less than we would want it to be,' he said. He added that staff leaving the service and retirements would account for most of the job losses.
Eurofound (2007), University Hospitals of Leicester Trust, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 64905, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/64905.