Letter to the Editor
The Birmingham Post
Tuesday 04 March 2003

Sir,
Jonathan Walker's recent article, "Row Hospital is reporting to M.P." (Post, Feb 11), gave considerable oxygen to Worcester MP Mike Foster's new-found awareness of the difficulties being reported by users and staff at Worcester's new PFI hospital.

Apparently the MP is to be on the weekly information list to be told about a whole host of bureaucratic, jargonised parameters, indicators of bed-occupancy, delayed discharges, red alerts & yellow-two alerts. While he cometh late to hospital awareness, we in  Health Concern will try to forgive him, but only if he looks up from the "spun" reports he is likely to get and counterbalances the "quango-speak" with real-patient, patient-in waiting, and patient-in-ambulance waiting experiences.

With this in mind, and hoping that he will seek balance, all with a hospital tale to tell, good or bad, to write to him at_

Mike Foster M.P.
The House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

and perhaps an 'Information' photocopy of the letter to Dr. Taylor will emphasise attention.

Such balance could influence Mr, Foster towards reading the recently published repentance consultation document that has come from Mr. Milburn's Health Department. 
It is entitled "Keeping the NHS local: A New Direction of Travel".

Should he read it, and become 'on-line' to it, he will be in real danger of joining Dr. Richard Taylor's Health Concern group, and  thus ensuring re-election when the time comes. There would be a proviso from Health Concern however, he would have to persuade whoever is Minister of Health when the new policy is adopted, that the newly proposed networking of local hospitals should be given emergency retrospective implementation in Worcestershire.

Then the new networking between Worcester, Redditch and the refurbished Kidderminster Hospital would really provide a service for the whole county to be proud of. Most of what is now advised in the document is the very opposite of the recent sad mess that is Worcestershire's present hospital reconfiguration.

David Parry
Health Concern
Kidderminster