JOB cuts and risks to patient safety are feared as hospital chiefs consider new technology to ‘boost secretarial efficiency and save money’.

Public services union Unison has blasted Warrington and Halton hospitals, saying tools such as digital dictation could endanger patients’ lives and lead to redundancies.

A spokesman said: “This could be extremely dangerous and damaging to frontline services as the cuts will impact on standards of patient care.

“The trust needs more medical secretaries, not less, to ensure consultants spend their time treating patients and not on administration.”

The hospital trust confirmed a clerical review was taking place to look at how its administration functioned in relation to new technologies being introduced elsewhere in the NHS.

These include electronic transcription services, digital dictation and electronic reporting of results, all of which have come into use recently to speed up correspondence with patients and other health professionals.

A spokesman said: “The potential introduction of new technology will mean that some of the traditional administration roles in the hospital may change quite significantly.

“In planning for the future, we need to ensure we have the right levels of staff with the appropriate skills.

“We have been consulting throughout with all staff and their union representatives and have been considering different options put forward by all parties to look at how we might structure our clerical functions in the future.

“Sadly, some of the messages being put out are untrue. Any changes that are made will not impact on patient safety and are designed to improve our reporting and speeding up correspondence to GPs.”