Labour film warns against hospital shake-up
Plans for a £312 million shake-up of Shropshire's hospital services has come under fire in a short film produced by the Labour Party.
The animated video, which tells the stories of different characters affected by the Future Fit scheme, has been put together by the party's Shrewsbury & Atcham branch.
It urges people to object to both options being proposed in the consultation process, which closes on September 4.
The preferred Future Fit option put forward by the Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin clinical commissioning groups is for a single emergency department for the county at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Under that model, Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital would take on responsibility for providing planned care.
The consultation also offers a second option, for Princess Royal to house Shropshire’s emergency department and for Royal Shrewsbury to become the planned care site.
The clinical commissioning groups, supported by hospital management, say emergency services need to be concentrated on a larger, single site, where more consultants would be on hand at any given time.
They say that only patients who arrive by emergency ambulance will use the new A & E unit. All other services would still be provided by urgent care centres on both sites.
But the Labour video calls for emergency units to be retained at both sites, warning that the reorganisation could mean longer waits for treatment, putting patients in danger.
The film features a character called Arnold, from south Shropshire, who is angry about the number of buses he has to get to visit his friend in hospital at Telford.
Another character called Jane is left with a permanent disability because staff at the emergency unit tell her to visit the urgent care centre first.
The film says the main beneficiary of the scheme is a character called "Fred", who owns shares in a company contracted to deliver the scheme.
Daniel Kawczynski, Conservative MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, warned that the £312 million investment earmarked for the scheme could be lost if the public do not get behind it.
He has written to every voter in his constituency urging them to have their say.
He supports the health chiefs' preferred option, which would see the enlarged central emergency unit based at Shrewsbury.
