In a Parliamentary debate on closures to Accident and Emergency Units in London, Siobhain has again highlighted the threat to popular local hospital St Helier, which looks likely to lose it's A&E, Maternity Unit, and hundreds of hospital beds, as a result of the need to find £370m of savings in the local NHS.
Siobhain's speech to MPs is as follows:
Accident and Emergency Units
7 Feb 2013
Mister Speaker,
I join this debate as someone else whose A&E is targeted for closure.
My local NHS say they need to “reconfigure” services because they “have to deliver £370 million savings each year... a reduction of around 24% in their costs.”
And so, they have had to set up a programme laughably called Better Services Better Value, to decide which of 4 local hospitals – St Helier, St George’s, Kingston and Croydon – should lose its A&E.
That’s despite the fact that across South West London the number of people going to A&E is going up by 20%, or that the birth rate in our part of London continues to rise.
Last summer, the bad news came that it would be my local hospital, St Helier, and that we would lose our A&E, maternity, ICU, children’s unit, renal units and 390 in-patient beds.
To be honest it’s all been a bit of a shambles.
NHS South West London was due to rubberstamp the proposals in July, but this decision was unexpectedly postponed.
Then in September they proudly press released that a decision was imminent, and that public consultation would start on 1 October, with one doctor quoted as being “excited by the huge potential of the BSBV programme.”
Then that decision was put off.
Perhaps they’d taken note of a petition signed by more than 30,000 people,
or of thousands of local residents at a protest picnic organised by local mums,
at which the Leader of Merton Council, Cllr Stephen Alambritis,
a former football referee,
was cheered as he waved a red card at the plans.
Perhaps they’d read the poll of GPs showing a majority against the closure.
Or perhaps it was because of a scathing National Clinical Advisory Team report into the plans, which mocked BSBV’s claim that an astonishing 60% of emergency patients would use primary care instead of A&E, saying:
“The assumption that 60% ... can be managed by ... primary care demands detailed local analysis. Elsewhere in the UK a consistent finding is ... far lower, usually ... 15-20%. Reconfiguration based on the higher figure may not achieve the anticipated benefits.”
But what really put a block on the plans was the sudden collapse of another nearby hospital.
Epsom Hospital had long had financial troubles, and in the 1990s these were so bad it was forced to merge with the more financially viable St Helier, to form Epsom and St Helier Hospital Trust.
That merger was never ideal, as Epsom has more in common with other Surrey hospitals than St Helier.
So in 2011 it was finally decided Epsom and St Helier should de-merge and that Epsom should merge with a hospital in Surrey, Ashford and St Peter’s, instead.
All was going well until last year, when it was revealed Epsom’s debts were far worse than originally thought.
The merger deal with Ashford and St Peter’s collapsed, and Epsom was left out in the cold.
This made Surrey panic about what BSBV was planning.
After all, if St Helier lost its A&E and Epsom collapsed, there might be no hospital between Tooting and Guildford.
So BSBV was put on hold.
But in retrospect this has only made matters worse.
Instead of closing one A&E out of 4 hospitals, the local NHS has just decided to close 2 out of 5.
That will be catastrophic.
We all know Epsom, with its MP in the Cabinet, and its wealthy population who can afford a judicial review, will put up a big fight, so the consequences for South West London will be disastrous.
There are parallels with what happened in Lewisham. Patients will suffer because of the financial problems of a hospital miles away.
We thought things were bleak before. They are even bleaker now.
If St Helier was singled out for service closures even before this latest development, it is going to be even more difficult for our community than ever before.
But the argument remains the same, and my local community will not stop arguing.
Closing services at St Helier is a false economy.
200,000 people will have further to go in an emergency.
And because the local NHS say for St Helier to remain viable patients living in the rest of South West London will have to go there for minor treatments, patients living many miles away will also have to travel all the way to St Helier for minor conditions.
Indeed, NCAT expressed concerns about whether this was workable.
Then there is the impact on maternity services.
NCAT says that if St Helier closes the remaining maternity units would have to deliver 6,500 babies each per year, plus 2,500 in midwife units and 880 home births, even though experts believe it’s a bad thing for maternity units to deliver more than 6,000.
Mister Speaker, things were bad enough even before Epsom’s problems were thrown into the mix.
An A&E will close, even though A&E visits are due to go up 20% in the next 5 years.
A maternity unit will close, and thousands of parents will give birth further from home, even though births will go up by 10%.
Even when it was just St Helier under threat, NCAT said:
“Successful implementation ... depends on a multitude of supporting improvements ... that are not well defined in the proposals.”
They concluded that “The reconfigurations are based on an optimistic view of capacity.”.
Next Monday, I will be hosting a meeting for my local constituents to try to update them about what is going on.
Obviously, the fight goes on.
But after the decision in Lewisham, where the A&E will close because of failings in another hospital, it is hard to be cheerful.
The plans are clearly opposed by my local community.
Just last night my local Council, Merton, passed a strongly worded motion backed by Councillors from the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Independent parties, saying any decision on St Helier should be referred to the Secretary of State.
So I am very confident that he will have to make the decision on St Helier too.
He will know that his coalition colleagues are on our side – although I must say I wish they were doing more.
The hon Member for Sutton and Cheam only raised his objections after he lost his job as a Health Minister last summer, and only then complained about his inability to get his ministry to listen.
Meanwhile, although the hon Member for Carshalton and Wallington says he opposes the plans, it isn’t very reassuring that he has chosen to become Deputy to the man responsible for putting St Helier under threat in the first place – the former Health Secretary and rt hon member for South Cambridgeshire.
I could go on and on and on.
The NHS admits it must save £370m in my part of London alone.
The UK Statistics Authority have made it clear the Prime Minister has broken his election pledge to increase health spending.
Demand for A&E is up. The birth rate is up.
But instead of focusing on improving the NHS, this Government has focused on top-down reorganisations.
If St Helier goes the way of Lewisham or worse, and loses its A&E and countless other services, my constituents will know why.
Mister Speaker, my constituents are very angry.
They know this will not work.
They want to hear, today, from Ministers that it
will
be
stopped.
ENDS