Shropshire Star comment: Perfect storm facing hospital

There are the continuing inquiries, now involving the police, into maternity care and baby deaths. There is the still unresolved strategic upheaval associated with the long running and much delayed Future Fit process. Recruitment problems too.

And now there is a new whirlwind, the possibility – and at present it is only a possibility, an option that has not been ruled out – that the Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust which manages the Royal Shrewsbury and Princess Royal hospitals could be placed in ‘special administration’.

As a measure of how big a deal that would be in reputational terms, it is a very rare move, and one which was used with the scandal-hit Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust – a trust that was eventually dissolved.

Already SaTH has been placed in special measures, which apply to trusts where there are serious failures in the quality of care, and are a mechanism to ensure that things improve. And if things do not get better or insufficient progress is made, then that is where special administration comes on to the table.

If it sounds ominous, it is – a last resort in which somebody is appointed to take full control of the trust and, while services continue, the administrator undertakes time-limited consideration of options for the future.

This amounts then to more than the threat of a big stick to get the trust to improve. The entire trust could be kicked out of the park.

There should not be any need to have anything focussing minds, but if there were, this is it, a Sword of Damocles over the trust’s collective head.

A positive is that the point of the whole process is to ensure improvements which guarantee high standards of care that patients should be able to expect.

There will be widespread dismay and concern though that our local trust, bearing the names of our major towns, now appears to be moving onto the critical list.