Future Fit consultation finally starts as A&E crisis laid bare
The extent of Shropshire’s A&E staffing crisis was revealed today as the Future Fit review into the future of hospitals in our county was officially launched.
Figures today reveal A&E departments in Shrewsbury and Telford are currently short of eight consultants and 21 middle-grade doctors.
Hospitals chief executive Simon Wright said he hoped to appoint four new consultants who would be in position by January next year, alleviating one of the biggest pressures on the hospital.
But the situation relating to middle grade doctors remains precarious.
Options
Mr Wright is backing proposals that would see a single emergency centre serve the whole of Shropshire, either at Princess Royal Hospital Telford or Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
Under the latter option, which is preferred by the joint CCG committee, Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital would specialise in planned care – but both hospitals would also have urgent care centres that would deal with most walking wounded cases.
Women and children’s services would have to be based at the hospital chosen as the site of the emergency centre.
Mr Wright said the changes are essential if Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust is to provide adequate emergency care in the future. He says the staffing crisis has been exacerbated by uncertainty.
He added: “We have to create an environment where doctors and nurses want to come and work and that is difficult with some of our constraints. We have to sort out the workforce, that is our biggest risk.”
Five years later
Today’s launch of a public consultation is the culmination of a process that dates back to 2013.
The Future Fit review was finally confirmed in March when £312 million of NHS funding was given to make it a reality.
Asked to respond to critics of the Future Fit plans Mr Wright said: “If our doctors and nurses say it is the right answer, if the clinical senate, the powers that be at NHS say it is the right answer then you have to come to a point where you have to say it is the right answer.”
Mr Wright said the proposals had taken time to get to this stage and had secured multi-million pound backing from government.
He said: “If I start from the position that 300 doctors, nurses and GPs spent the best part of three years creating this model, we have secured the largest amount of capital, 50 per cent of the English allocation is coming to Shropshire, not London, not Manchester, not Birmingham, not Stoke, but to Shropshire I think this is something we should be celebrating.”
Open mind
The chief executive urged everyone to take part in the consultation whether they agree or not.
He said: “For those who perhaps are less well versed please come to the sessions, please ask questions, fill in questionnaires and take the time to really start to understand what this means for you and your family because we want to hear your views.
“I would say keep an open mind, look at the facts, look at the evidence. This is the biggest investment in capital in our county in 75 years and we have to make the best of it.
“It is helpful to have that scrutiny and I look forward to exploring those questions through the process but also hope they can ensure we make this a positive outcome.
“Scrutiny is a good thing, it allows us to challenge what we are doing and see if there are any weaknesses in it.”
'Black hole'
NHS campaigners today claimed there is a financial black hole at the heart of Future Fit.
Gill George of Shropshire’s Save the NHS group said the consultation should be used to take stock of the whole process and then to think again.
She urged people to speak up during the 14-week consultation, adding: “There is now a gaping black hole at the heart of the Future Fit financial plans.
"It is time to stop and re-evaluate the proposals before local health leaders lurch into serious and irreversible mistakes.”
She said figures she had seen show that there was no margin for error in the finances and the costings used by Future Fit for the future of A&E services lack detail.
She added: “Future Fit has always been a cuts plan. The latest information shows 330 nursing jobs set to go, and a cut in medical beds of over 10 per cent.
"The problem is that there just isn’t enough money coming into the NHS in Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin.
"Running the NHS as a collection of competing small businesses and starving them of the funding they need to survive is simply daft.
“Future Fit makes a bad situation much, much worse. We’re now facing at least £27 million extra cuts on top of the cuts we already knew about.
"We’re looking at the potential collapse of our hospital trust because senior managers can’t get their sums right."
The first Future Fit public exhibition will take place next Wednesday in Telford. Find out when and where all the events are taking place here.
