Archive for January 2010
Kaya Makarau-Schwartz, a volunteer for the save the Whittington campaign, writes a background guide to the proposals on the Whittington.
The Whittington Hospital serves 250,000 in the boroughs of Islington and Haringey from parts of Barnet and Camden. It has benefited from large amounts of investment over the few years these include, £30 million on a new wing including an Intensive Care unit. Also, the refurbishment of the maternity unit which includes a new birth centre, a neonatal intensive care unit that was expanded through an investment of £600,000 and a new £500,000 paediatric A&E unit was opened in 2008.
The Hospital employs 2000 members of staff and has a 400 bed capacity. In 2009 they treated 20,000 inpatients 16,000 day cases and saw 233,000 outpatients. The maternity delivered 3683 babies and the Accident and Emergency department treated 80,000 people. The Whittington also has very high levels of bed occupancy. The Hospital is sited in a densely populated area and is near major transport intersections.
The North Central London services and organisational review (covering Barnet, Camden, Haringey and Islington) has been looking at the implications of the Framework for action – Healthcare of London report. This has included services under the remit of Islington PCT including the Wittington Hospital. The report published by the review looked at the Clinical Advisory groups consideration of models set out in the framework and concluded that in the North Central London region there should only be three Major Acute Hospitals two of which are proposed to be in Camden and two local hospitals.
The review did not consider the Whittington in the short list as a major acute hospital which would have major implications on the existing services at the Wittington and the populations they serve.
There were two points made at the public meeting on Monday which I thought were very important:
1) Government policy is to keep an A&E department at the Whittington: Health Care for London, the government strategy for the future of the London NHS lists the Whittington as a local hospital and says that all local hospitals should have an A&E department, intensive care unit and maternity unit. If NHS London do come up with plans to close the Whittington A&E they will be breaking government policy.
2) The whole process might turn out to be unnecessary: NHS London tell us that they need to save money to close a blackhole in their funding in future years. But this worry is based on a projection of how much money they might get from future governments, and how much health services might cost to deliver in 10 years time, and both of these are very difficult to predict. For example, the growth in obesity seems to be slowing much quicker than expected, which will save the NHS a lot of money. Equally, if we keep moving quickly out of recession tax revenues will be up and there will be more money for the NHS. It seems daft to start the process of making massive decisions about the future of health services in North London now when we are in a very uncertain political and financial context.
Whatever happens NHS London did say that they will not agree any ‘options’ for the Whittington until the late Summer and will not consult until the Autumn, so we have plenty of time to build the campaign to tell NHS London that the Whittington must keep its major services.
Here is a few, quickly edited, short clips of the Save the Whittington meeting last night. Lots more to follow later.
We are now approaching 2,000 signatures on the online petition to save the Whittington – have you added your name yet?
But we need your help. We need to show how strong the local support for the Whittington Hospital is, and that is why we want to reach 2,000 signatures before the end of January. Click here to signing the petition to Save the Whittington Hospital
14
Public meeting: Save the Whittington
4 Comments | Posted by Catherine West in Public Meeting
Come to the Save the Whittington public meeting called by Jeremy Corbyn MP on Monday 25th January 2010 at 7.00pm.
The meeting will take place in Archway Methodist Church. You can find a map to the venue here.
The meeting is to organise our campaign and to get answers to the questions we asked NHS Islington last year.
And don’t forget, if you haven’t already signed the petition, please click here.
