Plans to change the way hospitals are paid would mean a top-up fund paid to specialist paediatric centres would be cut by two-thirds.
At the moment, centres that provide specialist children’s services receive 78 per cent more money than the standard rate paid to other hospitals carrying out the same procedure.
The payments take account of the complexity of cases treated at the hospitals, which involve more staff and increased monitoring than when the same operations are carried out on adults, or on children without underlying health problems.
But a Department of Health memo, dated 30 September and seen by the Daily Telegraph, proposed reducing the top-up to 25 per cent to make hospitals more efficient.
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