Anger over decision to merge Ludlow Hospital wards

Hospital supporters, GPs and Shropshire councillors have all expressed anger over the move to close the Stretton ward and combine it with the Dinham ward downstairs. It was announced a week before it is due to take effect from Friday amid claims no consultation took place.

Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust has said there will be no loss of beds and the new ward will be partitioned to maintain single-sex dignity.

But Tracey Huffer, Shropshire councillor for Ludlow East, said a lot of Government money had been spent refurbishing the hospital's two wards to make them single sex, only for one to now close and everyone get lumped in together.

She said: "We've taken a retrograde step.

"I can't get my head around it. It's going to go against everything they are trying to do with the Future Fit plans for the future of healthcare in the county, which is supposed to be about putting everything back at community level to free up acute care.

"The bottom line is I fear for the future of Ludlow Hospital as a whole."

She said the move had taken everybody by surprise, and Shropshire Council's health and adult social care scrutiny committee, which she sits on, had yesterday agreed to write to the trust's chair Mike Ridley.

"Basically we don't even know where the decision has come from," she said.

"None of the scrutiny committee members or even the chairman was aware of this – the GPs weren't aware, the clinical commissioning group wasn't aware."

She said Ludlow's GPs were informed on Friday night – just a week before the changes take effect.

Peter Corfield, chairman of Ludlow Hospital's League of Friends, said the way the proposed changes had been announced had made him angry.

He said when first told he understood the ward merge would be a temporary measure to do with shortage of permanent staff, difficulty in recruiting and over-reliance on agency staff.

But, he said, the statement eventually released by the trust told a different story.

"It implies that this permanent move is to the advantage of patients and hence the residents of south west Shropshire. This cannot be accepted," he said

Steve Gregory, Director of Nursing and Operations, said: "Our staff believe that they can manage the patients at Ludlow Hospital safely and effectively if they are all in one place. We have listened to our staff and support them in this and have agreed to nurse all of our patients on the ground floor of Ludlow Hospital.

"There will be no reduction of beds when we move to one clinical area. This move is in the best interest of patient safety and a direct response to the request of ward staff, who will now be able to work as one team. It has no bearing on present or future plans for Ludlow hospital."