'Critical' staffing crisis could see cardiology services moved to Telford

The proposal would see services centralised at Princess Royal Hospital, with staff saying it will be an 'interim measure to support workforce issues'.

Currently, inpatient cardiology services are provided at both PRH and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

The plans, which were discussed at a recent Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust community engagement meeting, would see a total of 38 beds used over two wards at PRH.

The 20 beds currently used for cardiology at RSH would be replaced by general medicine beds.

Donna Moxon, operational manager for cardiology, told the meeting that there is a high demand on cardiology services at the trust, but there have been workforce issues within the department for a number of years and recruitment has been difficult.

Under the Future Fit scheme - now called the hospitals transformation programme - cardiology services will be based at RSH, so the move to centralise inpatient services at PRH would be a temporary measure until the changes can be fully implemented.

The service would then be based in Shrewsbury.

Ms Moxon said the temporary plans will also help to prevent delays in having to transfer patients from RSH to PRH for diagnostic and intervention procedures.

She said other benefits would be patients receiving treatment more quickly and it would help to support winter demands facing the hospitals.

Ms Moxon delivered a presentation to the meeting, which said that due to recruitment issues the inpatient service had found it challenging to provide the required staffing levels, and any episode of staff sickness "is putting the service at risk".

She added: "The move will see us going to a single site.

"All patients of a level will be transferred directly via the ambulance service to PRH.

"It is hoped that when we come across, that will significantly improve our nurse and consultant staffing.

"At the RSH particularly the consultant staffing is now reaching a critical point.

"We currently already have two locums in place and it is generally quite difficult to employ a cardiologist."

She added: "We already have a significant amount of cardiology inpatients that have to be transferred across.

"This does build in delays to your care and your intervention.

"The demand we are currently seeing on both sites is level three and four, so they are the highest levels of demand we can see."

The outpatient service provided by cardiology will still remain on both sites if the proposals go ahead.

Ms Moxon said the most critically ill cardiology patients are already transported directly to Stoke or Wolverhampton.