Chorley A&E must not go the same way as Burnley

At the October health scrutiny meeting  I note there were no 'matters arising' from the previous health scrutiny meeting held in September. Why aren't councillors raising questions about the STPs and querying why we're still waiting for doctors to re-open Chorley & South Ribble A&E full time?

The Lancashire Teaching hospital NHS trust didn't attend Octobers health scrutiny meeting since apparently NHS Improvement had a very important meeting with them. I think we can all guess what that was all about - all queries on a postcard to the LTHT trust since they don't allow the public to speak at their meetings. I wonder what's to hide?

Watching the 'webcast' (link below) for October's Health scrutiny meeting I couldn't help but notice the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) representative mention the 999 call-centre advisors are occasionally obliged to remain on the phone and this was taking up valuable time. The thought occurred the reason for this is because many A&E's/Hospitals are running over-capacity resulting in ambulance crews being unable to get back on the road and attend other incidents? It's not rocket science is it?

Handover breaches are a 'clear indication' of a failed system

The figures for last year show a huge increase in serious Ambulance handover breaches (> 60mins) when Chorley A&E closed. Patients had to be taken to the Royal Preston hospital and any hospital nearby. Wigan saw a huge increase in patients arriving by Ambulance of almost 500% when Chorley & South Ribble hospital A&E shut it's doors in April 2016.
The ambulance handover times trebled and as the table above shows there was a huge increase in serious ambulance handover breaches resulting in patients lives' being put at risk.

To my horror however, the CCG had received instructions from NHS England and NHS Improvement not to penalise hospital trusts as they were going through a period of transition. *NWAS aren't penalised for waiting, the trust are supposed to pay but they've been told there's no recourse for breaching 4 hour and 12 hour targets. disgraceful!

And the problems of overcrowding at acute/A&E hospitals resulting in poor quality patient care haven't just 'gone away' either. In fact, they are getting much worse. Royal Blackburn Hospital (RBH) was on code 5 black alert over the weekend and today at RBH every single ambulance bay was full (image above) with some having to park.... on the CAR PARK!

Note here that Burnley's A&E was closed/downgraded in 2007 and moved to Blackburn resulting in one hospital in East Lancashire to cater for over 540,000 people. It's been crisis management ever since over at the Hospital in Blackburn, and patients as always pay the price for the politically motivated upheaval.

We're still waiting for a small number of mid-grade doctors to come to Chorley A&E and save the day and re-open services 24/7. Yet the longer this fiasco continues, the more suspicion arises that something else is planned for our A&E services.  Something so devious that even a hospital trust board avoiding a council health scrutiny meeting pales into insignificance in the overall scheme of things.

But we're not going away, we have a duty to ensure we keep what's rightfully ours in a 24 hour A&E service and that it remains in place for our children, and our children's children.

Finance is not the issue here, deception and betrayal of our NHS is...

LINKS


Webcast Health scrutiny committee Oct 31st 2017