Future Fit Shropshire: Call for clarity over emergency care at Telford hospital
More clarity is needed over the level of A&E services planned for Telford's hospital under a reorganisation of Shropshire's healthcare, according to a council leader.
Shaun Davies, the Labour leader of Telford & Wrekin Council said detail over a proposed 'A&E Local' for Telford's Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) was still lacking.
It comes after local health bosses responded to Health Secretary Sajid Javid's request for them to 'publicly' set out the services that will be provided at PRH as part of the Future Fit hospitals reorganisation being carried out by Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH)
Both PRH and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH), which are managed jointly by SaTH, are subject to the Future Fit reorganisation.
The plans would see the Shrewsbury site become home to the county's main 24-hour A&E department. Currently both hospitals have 24-hour A&E facilities.
PRH would have an 'A&E Local' although question marks remain over the nature of the cases it would be able to deal with.
The response - from Mark Brandreth, the interim accountable officer for Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Group - said that the A&E Local would offer 'urgent treatment services' 24 hours a day, although this appears to follow the initial 2018 plan for an urgent care centre at the site.
An urgent care centre is considered somewhere that deals with patients who have an injury or illness that "is not life or limb threatening, but requires urgent care".
Mr Brandreth's letter said: "Urgent treatment services will be available at Telford 24/7 through an “A&E Local” model. SaTH and the CCG as local commissioners will continue to develop a framework of options for outside core hours, which will include agreed protocols for blue light divert or transfer and direct admission protocols where appropriate."
Councillor Davies, said people needed to know the full detail on what services they would have access to at their local hospital.
He said: “Plans to downgrade services at Princess Royal Hospital continue to be developed despite them being out of date and unable to meet the needs of Telford’s communities in a post-pandemic world.
“If Telford’s A&E is set to be downgraded and the consultant led women and children’s unit closed, at the very least, residents deserve to know exactly what this would mean in practice and when they might see these changes implemented. There’s no detail around what an A&E Local would actually do."
Councillor Davies said the plans were not being "clearly explained to the public".
He added: “As a council, we remain firmly on the side of our residents and will continue to lobby for alternative plans that could bring world class facilities to people across the whole of Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin. As it stands, an option costing £312 million will leave a black hole and what will be left at the Process Royal after re-organisation is uncertain.
“Our local NHS remains under massive strain and with no immediate investment, these plans are simply not going to give people access to the NHS services that they value and deserve."
