Big shake-up on Shropshire hospitals
Thursday 23rd September 2010, 11:16AM BST.
Shropshire’s leading doctors want to turn the county’s two main hospitals into “centres of excellence” to secure their future.
Telford’s Princess Royal would become the centre for women and children’s services with the Royal Shrewsbury assuming the role for acute surgery and major trauma.
The Telford site would include consultant maternity, neonatal and inpatient paediatric units.
Both sites would continue to provide outpatients, day surgery and diagnostic services, as well as medical assessment and inpatient general medicine.
Midwife-led maternity units would also continue to be run at both hospitals, and both would keep an A&E department.
The suggestion emerged during a workshop which examined ways of ensuring that services provided by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust remain safe, attract high quality staff, and are affordable.
Health chiefs have warned that changes to the way services are delivered are vital or key facilities could be lost to hospitals in Stoke, Wolverhampton and Birmingham.
They have also voiced concerns that under Shropshire’s present healthcare system there could be times when there are not enough doctors to cover all departments at the two hospitals.
The workshop involved eight hospital consultants, 11 GPs, the hospital trust’s medical director, and the Department of Health’s national director for primary care.
The centres of excellence idea, along with other possible options, will now be shared with staff, patients and patient groups, and key NHS partners.
In December, a group involving officers from the county two primary care trusts, and health watchdogs, will be “testing” the proposals.
A formal consultation is expected to start early in the New Year.
Adam Cairns, chief executive of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust, said: “We believe that there is much to be proud of about the standards of health care in our two hospitals.
“However, we already face challenges to quality and safety and we are worried that without some changes, standards will start to slip.”
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Oh, more blurred stuff ‘centres of excellence’ appears to ‘mean’ something. From experience ‘management’ style words like that often disguise a reduction of some type.
I think most people want plain speaking and a simple to understand system. Two major hospitals because of the geography and then once people have their operations – then move them out to whats left of Cottage hospitals nearer home for recouperation to take pressure off the centres.
No more macro changes please except simlicity – they take too long, the economics are all messed up by the time most targets are missed and the world changes before the fancy current ideas are impletmented and the measurements mean nothing in the real world.
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Do people really wnat two hospitals only a few miles apart…
…if neither of them are big enough to deliver cutting edge care, so patients leave the county (at great expense….
…and neither can recruit career specialists because they don’t deliver the latest care
…and the cost of duplicating services 15 miles apart is ten million a year?
It is a high price to pay for the sake of a bus ride or a bit more petrol
Two hospitals providing to more or less matching sets of struggling second rate care – or two complementary hospitals each providing first class care for a particular group of patients?
That is the real choice
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“Shropshire’s leading doctors want to turn the county’s two main hospitals into “centres of excellence” ”
I’d have hoped they would be centres of excellence already !
“Telford’s Princess Royal would become the centre for women and children’s services with the Royal Shrewsbury assuming the role for acute surgery and major trauma”
No men’s services ???
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Although I no longer live in the catchment area for these hospitals I did for many years in the past and have to thank Shrewsbury Cardiology especially for the care and treatment I received. I think the measures you are planning would benefit everyone, especially if for example it means that patients would no longer be using three hospitals as I had to, Stoke, Telford and Shrewsbury for cardiac implants like Reveal Plus and Pacemakers etc. far better if you can be treated at the one hospital with the same specialists who know and understand the problems you have.
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I like the sound of this but wonder if it can really work in practice.
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Of course to facilitate this they would need to have a staff of excellent Doctors…if only this were possible
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What a joke!
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Has anyone considered the distance pregnant mums and small children from Newtown etc will now have to travel?
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Maybe if they went to a welsh hospital, seeing as Newtown isn’t in shrops.
Telford is the Biggest town and has the best transport links. and for towns like Newport, Market Drayton and Shifnal who DO pay for the services, this is a good idea, means pregnant moms dont have to travel all the way to Shrewsbury for a check up.
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Mate we are part of the UK and deserve treatment wherever we live even Telford :-(
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we might all live in the uk, but as Wales has a long succession of freebies paid for by the English, maybe they could afford to build a hospital for the people living in Eastern Wales.
Rather than meaning that people in the east of Shropshire might loose vital services, WHICH THEY PAY FOR
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Centre of Excellence… in name only that’s for sure.
Having had family stay at both hospitals for emergency admissions, I can say it is definately not a centre of excellence.
Get real!
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Stafford Hospital was a centre of excellence once
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what about the poor nurses not so long ago they wanted to cut them to save money, then they’ll want all the nurses who specialise in paediatrics at RSH will they have to move to PRH.
before any decisions are made have a look at Stafford they wanted to be a foundation hospital and what happened?
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PRH intensive care and childrens unit must be saved my daghter was saved by their care back in 2005 if she had to make the trip to shrewsury or further a field due to her extensive injuires following a car crash who knows if she would have survived, we need PRH kept fully operational
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As an employee of the nhs, i can personally comment on the standard of work at these 2 hospitals. My collegues and i work hard to provide the best service we can, we have recently been hit with cut backs which can be in some cases very difficult. However, we work to our full potential with the limited funds we receive to provide the care needed.
On a daily basis i see alot of the same cases an i can honestly say that the bulk of our expenditure is eaten up by the ever expanding waistline. As the obesity crisis becomes an epidemic hospitals are forced to rent bariatric equiptment to deal with the constant flow of the larger patients coming through the doors. The needs of the larger patients are greater. For example they tend to have more health problems which are exasperated by the increased body size, respiratory problems, cardio problems, the extra strain on the joints, type 2 diabetes, the list is rapidly growing. With all of these extra problems we are encountering within the health system its no wonder people are starting to see the strain with such a limited budget. It costs the NHS aproximately £1225 per week just to accomadate a bariatric patient (this figure only covers 1 wheelchair, 1 bed, 1 commode, 1 hoist, and 1 mattress)as hospitals are still ill equipt for the obesity epidemic they find themselves having to rent the equpitment to cope with the increased body mass.
This problem is putting an extra strain on the national health service and unless we tackle this issue, we will continue to struggle.
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How will a mother of three and no private transport visit a sick child in Telford when they live in somewhere like Minsterley on a limited budget.? We need two properly equipped and staffed hospitals in a predominantly rural area where the population is widespread. I suggest we need less talking shops run by over paid bureaucrats attended by doctors who should be involved in patient care not paper shuffling and internal medical politics.
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Madness. Close the two, and build a fit for purpose hospital, providing services to ALL clients across the catchment area. Improve the staff numbers, stop cutting shift hours to save pennies, improve staff morale, stop the need for extortionate bank staff who cannot deliver the same level of service as trust staff.
Centre of Excellence…..Emperors New Clothes.
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