Future Fit reforms vital for Shropshire's hospital services, says surgeon
A surgeon has argued that Shropshire's hospital services must change to make them fit for the future.
Mark Cheetham, who works at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), says the Future Fit model of care has clear advantages and will provide better care and results for patients.
The proposals involve having a single emergency centre to serve the whole of the county and a public consultation is currently under way.
Mr Cheetham said: "Every patient has the right to expect high quality, safe NHS care, now and in the future – but to do this, we need to change the way we deliver our hospital services.
"We want to make sure that patients are seen by the right person at the right time in the right place. As a surgeon working across both hospitals, I know first-hand that this isn’t always happening.
"People in the UK are living longer than ever, which is good news. But they are living longer with ill health, which is creating increasing demands on the health system.
"When I first qualified as a doctor, my typical patient would be someone in their 50s who has had a heart attack, but had nothing else wrong with them.
"Now, many people admitted to hospital are in their 80s with several long-term conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease or chronic kidney disease.
"This is particularly true in Shropshire, which has a higher proportion of older people than most counties in England."
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He said improvements in medicine and technology have led to people's expectations of healthcare being higher, and those standards can only be met by more care being delivered directly by fully trained consultants.
Mr Cheetham says that nowadays more specialists are needed to deal with emergencies, but these are spread across two sites under the current healthcare system in Shropshire.
Currently, there are only emergency surgeons at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and paediatricians at Telford's Princess Royal Hospital.
Mr Cheetham said: "This means it’s really difficult to look after children who need emergency surgery.
"It can also mean that patients are sometimes admitted to the wrong hospital, which creates a delay as they need to be moved to the right hospital to meet their needs.
"What we want to do is to create a specialist emergency site that contains all of our specialist doctors.
"This would mean patients are seen more quickly by the right person at the right time, resulting in better care and better outcomes for our patients."
He says the current arrangements mean operations are often cancelled at short notice due to beds being taken up by emergency patients.
Over the past year, about 500 people had their planned operations cancelled on the day.
It is hoped that separating emergency and planned care will mean less operations have to be cancelled.
The Future Fit consultation has set out two options for the future of the county's hospital services.
The preferred Future Fit option which has been put forward by Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin clinical commissioning groups includes siting the county’s emergency department at RSH.
Under that model, PRH would take on responsibility for providing planned care.
Both the RSH and PRH would also house an urgent care centre.
The second option would be for PRH to house Shropshire’s emergency department and for RSH to become the planned care site.
Visit nhsfuturefit.org for more information.
