Shropshire Star comment: How is closing Telford's A&E overnight good for Shropshire patients?

Two accident and emergency departments in Shropshire stretched and with long waiting times, despite recent improvements.

Yet the talk is of a counter-intuitive solution. Simple souls may think that the obvious response if things come to a crunch point would be to boost resources at the A&Es so they can cope with the punishing demand.

That is not the way the ground is currently being prepared. Amid recruitment problems at the units, there is a contingency plan in which, in extremis, the A&E at Telford's Princess Royal Hospital could face temporary overnight closures, with its night staff working from the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital instead.

This tactical measure would in effect trump and pre-empt the strategic proposal under Future Fit which would see the A&E unit at Telford close.

All those who have been campaigning to stop that happening would be presented with a fait accompli giving them exactly what they don't want even as the Future Fit process limps on.

Undermined

It would be temporary, but the principle advocated by campaigners that the Telford A&E must not close would be undermined and there would be a real fear that if it is allowed to happen once, there is nothing to stop it happening again and again, leading to the loss of Telford's A&E incrementally by stealth.

So there will be many who are fighting this battle who will think that Dr Simon Freeman, accountable officer for Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group, was speaking nothing but common sense at the group's board this week when he said: "Closing one A&E overnight would make performance even worse, not better.

"The logistics of moving patients around seems ludicrous."

The board is to write to SaTH seeking assurances over its contingency plan and to request a meeting with clinical directors.

The same meeting heard that 75 per cent of patients were now being seen within the four-hour government target. That target is for 95 per cent of patients to be seen within four hours, so Shropshire is doing badly.

Let us imagine that the A&E at Telford is closed overnight, and all the patients have to go to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. This would be a massive increase in workload at Shrewsbury and, not least, a great inconvenience to patients and their loved ones.

Whether or not closing Telford A&E overnight might have some staffing, managerial, or administrative benefits, it is going to be difficult to make a convincing argument to explain how, in the real world, it would make things better for Shropshire patients.