Future Fit: Ex-hospital boss claims Shropshire public were 'misled' over costs
A former Shropshire hospital boss has claimed people were misled during the Future Fit consultation as the spiralling cost of the scheme was not revealed.
David Sandbach claims health bosses would have known about the rising cost of inflation and people were misled about the financial viability of the hospitals shake-up plans.
Costed at £312 million in the original pre-consultation business case in 2016, a document leaked to the Shropshire Star last week revealed the figure has now risen to £498 million, a rise of almost 60 per cent.
The public had their say on the plans from the end of May to September 2018.
Health bosses say that for any project of this nature 'it is accepted that inflationary changes occur' and a number of options are being developed to take forward the scheme, which will see the county's main emergency centre based in Shrewsbury, and Telford's Princess Royal Hospital taking over responsibility for planned care.
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But Mr Sandbach, former chief executive of PRH, said they made promises that they knew could not be delivered.
He said: "It's worse than bad management. I believe that the public were deliberately misled during the consultation.
"It was well known before consultation took place that the cost of delivery of building at that time, which is in May 2018, would be roughly £50m or £60m more than the £312m.
"When the Future Fit process was launched I went to the Clinical Commissioning Group meeting and it was quite obvious to me that all Future Fit was was about a backlog maintenance problem at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and all they were interested in was buildings.
Community services
"They got it wrong because they didn't include investment that would be needed in the community services. If they don't invest in the community services, Future Fit will just be a big white elephant, because actually more work is done in the community than it's actually done in the hospitals."
Mr Sandbach said he agrees that planned and emergency care should be separated, but that an emergency hospital should be built to the east of Shrewsbury, instead of carrying out building work at RSH.
Last January, a joint committee of Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin CCGs approved the Future Fit proposals, which included downgrading the A&E at PRH to an urgent care centre.
However, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has since said there should be an ‘A&E Local’ at PRH. This is expected to only be open for "core hours" and will deal with emergency ambulance cases such as 'low risk chest pain', pneumonia, DVT or cellulitis.
Dave Evans, accountable officer for Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin CCGs, said: “For any capital scheme of this nature, which has been in development for a number of years, it is accepted that inflationary changes occur and our plans and costings must accurately reflect these changes.
“A number of approaches are set out within the draft document to ensure the clinical model is delivered.
"These will be explored and further developed, including delivering the clinical model within the original £312m, consideration of a phased development approach and segmenting the overall development and therefore the costs over a longer period.”
A strategic outline business case is currently being developed by Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) and health bosses say it is planned that the full business case will be completed next year.
SaTH, which runs PRH and RSH, has declined to comment on the details revealed in the leaked document.
