POINTS FROM DR RICHARD TAYLOR’S ADDRESS TO THE FOURTH PARTY CONFERENCE OF INDEPENDENT KIDDERMINSTER HOSPITAL AND HEALTH CONCERN -
HELD AT 11 CHURCH WALK ON 12 SEPTEMBER 2004

CELEBRATION OF ACHIEVEMENTS

General
No other similar district general hospital has been downgraded as severely as ours since the election of 2001.
The publication by the Government in February 2003 of “Keeping the NHS Local – a New Direction of Travel” and
The publication in July 2004 of the responses to this document and the Government’s conclusions.

Quotes from “Keeping the NHS Local – responses and conclusions: -

• “Keeping the NHS Local is now the core guidance to be followed by all health services planning change.”

• “It set out to give local health services and their users encouragement in developing imaginative, innovative approaches to providing the high quality, locally accessible health care that people have a right to expect.”

• “A key message in Keeping the NHS Local is that patients can be cared for safely in small hospitals even without, for example, surgeons on site to carry out emergency operations.”

• “Evidence from research does not support any general presumption that large hospitals benefit from economies of scale or that service concentration leads to improved outcomes for patients.”

Comment: These are all points we have been making unheeded since 1997.

Local
Significant elective surgery is returning to Kidderminster Hospital and more will follow during the next few months.
At last Trust managers are agreeing that patients are leaving our area unnecessarily. They estimate that 40 emergency patients per week are going to Worcester or Redditch when they should and could be treated here.
Dr Taylor has arranged for Professor Sir George Alberti, former President of the Royal College of Physicians and now the Government’s Tsar for Emergency Access, to visit Kidderminster in November to meet Trust managers and doctors to explore ways of improving local services for emergency patients.

CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE

• To continue through the ballot box and elected representatives to put pressure on the Government, regional and local health service managers and clinicians: -

• To maximise services for elective surgery at Kidderminster .

• To maximise the facilities for in-patients.

• To maximise facilities for the reception, assessment and treatment of emergency patients from Wyre Forest and parts of South Shropshire and South Staffordshire .

We will be helped immensely in our continued fight by the responses and conclusions following “Keeping the NHS Local”. This contains a blue-print for our next goal – the service already being provided at the new Hexham Hospital for a population of 70,000 people. (Hexham is approximately 16 miles from Newcastle .)

Examples from the Hexham model described in the Government document: -

• 24-hour urgent care centre.

• Daytime: staffed by senior A&E doctors and nurse practitioners; no junior doctors involved.

• Overnight: A&E doctors and GPs provide on-site cover across the whole hospital. Other consultant advice available on-call; no on-site emergency cover.

• 100 beds.

• Surgery is carried out by a trust-wide consultant network (36 surgeons on four sites).

• Close, effective integration between medical specialists and A&E doctors with a ‘physician of the week’ scheme whereby a consultant physician is present or on-call (with protected time for A&E work) to help with medical emergencies for a week at the time.  

Comment: 
What can be provided for the 70,000 people using Hexham Hospital, 16 miles from Newcastle, is the very least that must be provided for the many more people here, 18 miles from Worcester?
Now it has been seen to be possible in Hexham we have a specific aim to fight for as our next goal.
People, patients and staff are the same in Northumbria and Worcestershire.