18/07/06 - Public Meeting in Studley

Studley and Mappleborough Green residents will have their first opportunity to question John Rostill, Worcester Acute Hospitals Chief Executive about planned cuts to family services at Alexandra hospital at a public meeting on the 25th July at 7.30pm Studley Village Hall.

Save the Alex Campaigners are joining forces with folk from the area for a protest before the meeting at 6.30pm outside the village hall.

Save the Alex campaigner Mr Stote said,

"It is important that people come to the meeting, it their chance to object to the cuts and question the trust on why these cuts are taking place given the increased investment in the NHS as a whole" "I encourage all to join the protest before the meeting, a good turn out will put further pressure on the trust to re-think their plans. I also trust the residents will receive full support from their MP John Maples in fighting these cuts"

On Tuesday of this week Redditch and Bromsgrove PCT held a board meeting, during the meeting serious concerns were raised relating to the Clinical and Finance Review that the Worcester Hospital Acute (WHAT) Trust are currently carrying out. The acting chief executive highlighted 5 recommendations that The Review Project Board, which met on the 5th of July had placed on WAHT as conditions to taking the proposals forward, the conditions are as follows:

1) Clarity is required in terms of the clinical issues relating to service safety and staff shortages for the current service configuration, demonstrating in detail how and why the reconfiguration options are being proposed.

2) Clarity and detail is required to understand the logistics of the proposals in terms of; service moves between hospital sites, physical capacity and patient flow impacts.

3) Information and detail is required with regard to the financial implications of all proposals, e.g. affordability of establishing a women’s' hospital at the Worcester site, and how the financial impact will rest on WAHT/Ambulance Trust and the PCT and potentially other acute trusts in neighbouring health economies.

4) Clarity around the clinical protocols that will need to be developed to accommodate the changes in location and delivery of services, e.g. what will be the protocol for the Alexandra Hospital dealing with a critically sick child presenting at A&E day or night?

5) Choice - a better understanding is required of the impact of the Proposals on patient choice, both within and outside Worcestershire, e.g. Birmingham, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, together with an assessment of likely patient flows as this will underpin the viability of proposals. The Project Board is scheduled to meet again in September to review the results of the work outlined above and its impact on the proposals.

Neal Stote, local Save the Alex Campaigner said,

“The conditions imposed on the trust just show how little work went into putting the current draft Consultation proposals together, this is of great concern as WAHT have been working on this since the beginning of the year”

“It is of disappointment that WAHT at their Board meeting on Thursday 6th of July when they made their proposals public said that the Project Board had approved them. Whilst this is true they failed to mention any of the conditions that the Project Board had placed on them to allow this piece of work to move forward”

The Project Board is scheduled to meet again in September to review the results of the 5 areas of work outlined above and its impact on the proposals.

The Chairman, Graham Vickery also raised areas of concern within his report to the board

Taken from Chairman's Report

The Acute Trust is waiting for the new PCT to come into being before it embarks on the statutory consultation process. The issues for Redditch and Bromsgrove will obviously revolve around the reduction in women's and children's services at the Alexandra Hospital. The proposal to construct a new specialist women's provision in Worcester is surprising, given the case strongly presented to the Trust that North Worcestershire patients would choose Birmingham rather than Worcester to travel to, there being already specialist and well known hospitals there. Quite why the option of collaborative working with Birmingham, as in the proposals, has not been referred to for Redditch, needs discovering. Mr Vickery’s report also talked about the new Worcestershire PCT the recent top slicing of PCT’s to fund the Debt in the Acute Sector

Taken from Chairman Report

Our own Worcestershire PCT reconfiguration board met again on 30 June. Its chair and project leader, Laurence Tennant, has also taken on the role of acting chief executive at Wyre Forest PCT. There is currently a lack of clarity about the new PCT's chief executive appointment. There is a risk of delay because of the ring fencing process not bringing forth a decision as early as had been anticipated, which means that an interim arrangement, possibly a committee of the existing chief executives, will have to take early and provisional decisions where required. However the appointment of the chair still seems likely to be made by the end of July or the first week in August

The financial situation was discussed and the ridiculous (my word) procedure of top slicing the PCTs (two of which are already forecasting deficit) and then donating resources to the acute sector to bail out failed or non-existent cost improvement plans. We have received support for reviewing the top-slicing decision from the County Council which passed a resolution on 29 June deploring the SHA decision and urging reconsideration. The chairs and chief executives of the three PCTs have jointly written to the chief executive of the new SHA seeking a meeting urgently to review the Worcestershire situation.

Mr Stote further commented that it is hard to see how the new PCT will be able to carry the in-depth work / consultation needed with community affected by WAHT’s Clinical and Finance Review if they are not going to have a chief Executive till September

He added “As for the top slicing of PCT’s to allow the formation of the NHS bank, it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. It has left PCT’s with less money to commission services from the Acute Trust, so either the PCT will go in to debt or the Acute Trust will not get paid for all the work it has done, either way it is a continuing spiral of debt that the patients, staff and services will end up paying for”