New Shrewsbury walk-in centre move not easing A&E crisis
Moving a walk-in centre to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital does not appear to have cut the numbers of people with non life-threatening conditions they are still having to treat, a report says.
Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust chairman Professor Peter Latchford said it was "troubling" to read that the creation of the urgent care centre in A&E at the Shrewsbury site in December last year was seemingly not having any effect.
But trust chief operating officer Debbie Kadum insisted it was still early days.
The walk-in centre was moved from Monkmoor to the Royal Shrewsbury site in a bid to offset a huge increase in the number of people coming through the doors of A&E.
It was hoped doctors and nurses at the new centre would be able to treat minor injuries and ailments, leaving A&E staff free to deal with the most serious cases.
But a report which went before a trust board meeting at Telford's Princess Royal Hospital yesterday says: "It is early days but it does not appear to have impacted on the number of patients attending the emergency department."
Professor Latchford said: "That's troubling. The whole Future Fit programme depends on demand suppression in A&E through the use of urgent care centres. So if it's not working, we need to know pretty sharpish."
Mrs Kadum said many of the medical staff currently working at the urgent care centre were only able to treat minor illnesses and not minor injuries such as fractures.
She added: "I think it's early days at the moment. The people in there at the moment only have certain skills and until everybody has got the skills that means we can't see more patients than we currently do."
Trust chief executive Peter Herring said he had always believed it would be the second phase of the move that saw changes become visible.
"All we have done at the moment is physically relocate it," he said. "Importantly, talking to staff in A&E, the response to it has not been negative."
The move has proved controversial with Shropshire Defend Our NHS making a formal complaint to hospital trust regulator Monitor in the hope of overturning the move. It is raising money to pay for lawyers to support their complaint against Shropshire CCG and NHS England.
The centre is open from 8am to 8pm every day.
