Comment: The potential disaster of NHS closures

Wednesday, 17 November 2010 12:00 AM

Smaller hospitals and surgeries are at risk from elements in the NHS concerned with financial motivation rather than patient care.

By Anne McIntosh MP

People greatly value their GP and care very passionately about their local community hospital. Any threat, therefore, of closure or rumour of closure automatically sets alarm bells ringing for patients and their loved ones, GPs, nurses and all others directly affected.

A text book example of how not to proceed was demonstrated recently in my constituency of Thirsk, Malton and Filey, by NHS North Yorkshire and York when they closed Ryedale Ward at Malton Hospital.

In the first instance, the Primary Care Trust claimed there was no question of Ryedale Ward at Malton Hospital closing. Then, following a decision taken on the 23rd September, the beds were removed from the ward by stealth until it was effectively closed on 19th October. Even when facing the Health Minister and myself, at a meeting in the Department of Health, the Primary Care Trust representatives could not bring themselves to say that the ward was closing.

Despite this closure being termed a 'pilot scheme', I am mindful that once a ward has been closed, it is then much more difficult to re-open it again.

Of course, what should have happened was for the Primary Care Trust to consult those affected; the GPs, the nurses, representatives of the hospital, patients and their loved ones in an open and transparent way. This is echoed in the Government pledge that, in future, all service changes must be led by clinicians and patients, and are not to be driven from the top down.

I hope at the end of the so called 'pilot scheme', there will be the full, transparent and open consultation which should have taken place prior to the closure.

Feelings are running so high in my constituency that more than seventeen hundred residents of the Ryedale area have signed a petition, which I presented to the House of Commons yesterday that strongly objects to way in which the PCT have implemented the bed closures without public consultation.

I see this ward closure as part of a wider pattern which is emerging where services at community hospitals and GP practices are being removed or scaled down without adequate consultation. My fear is that there is a financial motivation behind both the decisions being taken and the lack of consultation.

If this trend of service cuts continues, then our community hospitals could be reduced to a size where it is no longer viable to keep them open. In a rural area such as North Yorkshire, where access to a facility or service is key, consequences such as these could be disastrous. My long term ambition for the health service on which we all depend, is that the clinical need of the patient must be at the heart of our health care.

Anne McIntosh is the Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton.

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