A&E Department under threat at Bishop Auckland General
Helen has expressed her grave concern at the proposed downgrading of the Accident and Emergency Department at Bishop Auckland General Hospital.
News of this proposal came through a leaked document that revealed the County Durham and Darlington Hospitals Trust are considering replacing the A&E Department with a minor injuries unit, which could mean that patients will have to travel to Darlington Memorial or University Hospital, Durham, to receive emergency treatment.
Helen said:
“This is very worrying news, and I have already raised my concerns with NHS management about the removal of A&E services from Bishop Auckland General.
The Trust will present their final proposals to the PCT Board on 2nd September at 13:00 at the Ramside Hall Hotel, and I have arranged a public meeting in Bishop Auckland Town Hall at 18:00 on Wednesday 17 September to discuss these proposals.
I would urge all those who are concerned to attend”.
Helen raised a number of issues with NHS management in July, when she became aware that they were planning to consult on two options for reorganising acute services in the County Durham and Darlington Hospitals Trust, both of which involve closing the A & E department at Bishop Auckland.
Helen said:
“The Trust’s case is based on the ‘viability’ argument in the Royal College’s report on acute health services i.e. that an A & E department must have certain specialisations available 24/7, and a high flow of patients. The numbers in the report could not be reached in all three hospitals in the Trust, because the population served is too low.
This is an important principle, but it ignores another equally important principle, namely that we are running a National Health Service which should provide equal access to care for all.
Moreover, it ignores what people want and the service is after all for and paid for by the public, so meeting their expectations is the right thing to do. I surveyed my constituents and got a very high response, with 93% saying the one thing they wanted in their hospital was an A & E department.
I have repeatedly asked the Trusts (i.e. the Acute, Primary Care and Strategic Health Authority) to do some geographical analysis of need and access; in order to take account both of where the medical needs are (using the multi-deprivation index) and the real time it will take people to get to hospital (I have wards where 40% of the population do not have a car), looking at public transport etc.
They have failed to do this and seem to regard it as an add-on, whereas in terms of assessing safety I believe it is fundamental. It is no good measuring safety from the point people cross the threshold into the A & E; we must take account also of how long it takes to get to hospital. This is a perfectly straightforward piece of work.
There is also a question mark from the perspective of the north of the County over whether Durham could cope if BAGH A&E was closed.
The Acute Trust tells me that much good care can be delivered by paramedics to people at home or on the journey. This will be greeted with horror in West Durham where the Ambulance Service has been re-organised so badly that their response target has fallen from 45% to 2%. Moreover, the Acute Trust were unaware of this failure, which demonstrates how narrow their perspective is. This is a point I notice is also in the Royal Colleges document, but one they have conveniently ignored. The Strategic Health Authority is also culpable because they are supposed to look overall at how the services fit together.
Furthermore, on the safety point it is not credible to argue as they do that a paramedic is fine but that BAGH is unsafe.
The Acute Trust also have a litany of “recruitment difficulties” going back at least 15 years. They are claiming it is still difficult to recruit either consultants or junior doctors: they say women doctors are particularly inflexible (which I believe reveals a sexist and old-fashioned attitude). This seems to me to be a management responsibility to get right; I had understood we had a surplus of young doctors. Clinically led does not mean producer oriented, the NHS is run for the benefit of the patients not the doctors.
This leads into my final set of concerns around the good use of resources and taxpayers’ money. We have two new hospitals at Durham City and Bishop Auckland, the latter is not being run at full capacity at the moment. Perhaps it would be slightly more expensive in running cost terms to do this, but it is wasteful not to use this resource (we still have the PFI charges) and instead to embark on major capital spend at Darlington which is what they are doing. Again I have repeatedly requested the figures on the capital stock, expected life and projected investment but they have not been forthcoming”.
