Ealing’s 68,000 Children Will Be Excluded from Local Accident and Emergency Services as from June 2016

Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group (ECCG) voted unanimously at a meeting held in public on 9 December 2015 to delete Children’s A&E services at Ealing Hospital as from June 2016. As from then nowhere across Ealing’s 21 square miles will a chronically ill or seriously injured Ealing child be found life saving treatment, surgery and intensive care. Ealing children are being sacrificed for the greater good of children in other parts of North West London.

So much for Tory ministers’ and Tory MPs’ promises in May 2015 of ‘A&E saved at Ealing Hospital’ and ‘no more changes to Ealing Hospital A&E for three years’.

As a replacement for A&E paediatric services in Ealing, more beds, consultants and nurses will be added to five ‘remote’ hospital A&Es outside the London Borough of Ealing. These remote hospitals are Hillingdon, Northwick Park, Chelsea & Westminster, St Mary’s and West Middlesex.

In future paramedics in ambulances and parents in cars in Ealing will have to decide themselves how ill or injured a child is before taking the child to the poorly rated Ealing Hospital Urgent Care Centre or to one of the five remote hospital A&E units.

There appears to be no strategy in place for providing additional mental health A&E facilities in the five remote hospitals for Ealing children.

A new ill-named facility has been opened at Ealing Hospital called ‘Rapid Access Clinic’ (RAC). It’s for children. It’s not rapid access for children and their parents as it’s not walk-in and attendance is only by GP referral. We all know that access to GPs is not rapid. Another limiting factor is that the RAC is only open for four hours each weekday.

Ealing residents in attendance at the meeting voiced their concerns about the legality of and risks inherent in the changes and the viability of the recently Mansfield Commission discredited NHS NW London ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) strategy and programme. Dr Mark Spencer – a SaHF lead – said that the NHS had pronounced the changes ‘legal’ and that it was 100% certain that no child would die as a result of the changes.

ECCG/SaHF executives became somewhat tetchy about the Mansfield Report. They said they knew about it but it did not come up with any alternative approaches. This comment was a red herring as the five Local Authorities who commissioned the report asked the Commission to review the implementation of SaHF. When an activist suggested that SaHF costs had ballooned to £1.3 billion ECCG/SaHF said that this figure was inaccurate. I then asked for them to tell us what is the current cost for SaHF. Complete silence followed. Maybe the cost has now risen beyond £1.3 billion.

ECCG/SaHF is still clearly in denial about the 12 months of awful A&E performance in NW London being directly related to the closure of two hospital A&Es in September 2014. They quoted the ‘independent’ report (£150,000 McKinsey &Co) report on the subject in their defence. This was just plain silly as the report actually provides no hard evidence to dispute the reason being the closures. In fact of pages 45 and 72 the McKinsey report identifies extra loading at St Mary’s and Northwick Park Hospital A&Es due to ‘sector changes’ and ‘additional pressure from A&E changes’. See here.

For the children of Southall these paediatric A&E changes are a tragedy. The closure of Ealing Hospital maternity in June 2015 was also a tragedy for Southall mothers. Parts of  Southall are some of the most deprived areas in the whole of England. Just what has Southall done to deserve such a tragic downgrade in its local healthcare services?

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Issue: 31

December 2015

This occasional newsletter is researched, written and edited by a group of concerned residents in Ealing, West London who want to preserve our NHS. We view the wholesale engagement of private, for-profit healthcare service suppliers as unnecessary, profligate and dangerous. Process improvement is what is needed in our NHS – not revolution.

IS SHAPING A HEALTHIER FUTURE (SaHF) ON ITS LAST LEGS?

SaHF was/is a June 2012 plan for NHS NW London. Its intentions were/are to include:

+ cost savings of £1 billion by 2015

+ improving care both in hospitals and in the community and saving many lives each year

+ eliminating 5,600 jobs

+ closing 979 beds

+ closing 4 of the 9 hospital A&E units

+ switching outpatient appointments away from acute hospitals to ‘community settings’ – so called Out-Of-Hospital (OOH) care

+ demolishing the major hospitals at Ealing and Charing Cross and building new much smaller ‘Local Hospitals’ on the heritage sites.

Through the miasma of the eight Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) that spend the NHS NW London budget goodness knows to what extent these intentions has been realised. However:

+ NHS London’s loss for 2014/15 was £110.8 million – so it’s really challenging to envision any significant cost savings accrued last year by NHS NW London  

+ Clearly only two of the A&Es have closed and demolition has not yet started on the Ealing and Charing Cross sites

+ There is still no clear budget for SaHF. The OOH budget for example has fluctuated widely over three years – from as low as £72 to £86 million over three years to over £190 million each year!

It was made clear in June 2012 that some of the proposed SaHF services were already being put in place. It was also stated that the SaHF changes would ‘take at least three years to put in place’. Three years have now passed but I can find no public statements as to when the SaHF changes will be completed.

Data on NHS NW London job and bed losses is hard to find. No-one, currently, seems to want to talk about how many lives have been/are being saved. As for improving care in hospitals, the consistently poor A&E performance at all but one of the NHS NW London acute hospitals makes this a nonsense. In fact the region has the worst performing Type-1 A&E in England. Ironically the only acute hospital A&E which is consistently performing well in the region is Ealing Hospital’s A&E. This unit, of course perversely, is on the SaHF closure list.

By any reasonable measure SaHF must be viewed as a failure.

It’s unproven, late, over budget and unfunded. Surely it is just a matter of time before everyone notices that the (SaHF) emperor has no clothes.

(Some of the above data has been extracted from John Lister’s excellent June 2012 TUC paper- ‘North West London’s NHS Under The Knife’) – and also from the many research efforts of Save Our Hospitals’ Colin Standfield)

Creating New SaHF Out Of Hospital Services in Ealing : Still in the Slow Lane

The SaHF programme in 2012 promised Out-Of- Hospital (OOH) services which would reduce admissions to hospitals. But OOH services have been a long time coming in Ealing.

At the North West London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on 16 October 2015 it was stated that the OOH ‘Hubs’ in North Ealing and East Ealing are expected to be delivered in 2017/2018. They will cost £34 million to set up. As to what services a hub will provide – this is still not crystal clear. A third hub will exist in the new Ealing (‘Local’) Hospital. No date is suggested for this but a £90 million price tag for creating this hospital is quoted.

However all of the above capital spend requires approval up to HM Treasury level. Such approvals are unlikely to be obtained before summer 2016. The relevant Business Cases are apparently still not finalised.

McKinsey &Co Management Consultants Still Riding the SaHF Gravy Train

Colin Standfield of Save Our Hospitals has revealed that McKinsey & Co received £549,828 from SaHF in August 2015. And the nature of the work, apparently, was ‘Delivery Architecture’.

Given that SaHF was conceived by 2012 one might have thought that the architecture to deliver SaHF (whether ‘soft’ or ‘hard’) should certainly have been in place way before 2015.

Since 2013 NHS NW London has paid external advisors over £33 million in fees. McKinsey &Co alone received £27,000 every day last year!

NHS NW London Pays McKinsey & Co £150,000 to ‘Mark Its Own SaHF Homework’

In 2009 McKinsey & Co were employed by NHS London to extol the virtues – with little supporting evidence – of reducing expensive A&E services and replacing them with cheaper ‘Out-Of-Hospital’ services. This ‘efficiency’ mantra was much in evidence in the 2012 NHS NW London SaHF strategy and programme. Part of the SaHF programme was the closure of four of the nine hospital A&E units.

In September 2014, two of these units were closed – at Central Middlesex and Hammersmith Hospitals. Immediately after the closures A&E performance figures for the region plummeted. They fell so far that the region was, and is still often, the poorest performing A&E region in England. Most damning was the region’s being England’s worst for Type-1 A&E patients.

Activists were understandably up in arms. NHS NW London responded by saying (incredibly) that the poor performance had nothing to do with closing two of the nine hospital A&E units. To bolster their position they announced they would commission an independent review of why the poor performance came about and what lessons could be learnt.

This ‘independent’ report never reached the public domain. On 27 October 2015 Save Our Hospitals submitted a FOI request for sight of the report and supporting details. NHS England replied on 26 November 2015. The report said the drop in performance had nothing to do with the closure of the two A&E units. It cited a long list of unconsidered factors the main one of which was unexpected increase in local demand. I call this very poor capacity and contingency planning.

But just as mind boggling was the identity of the ‘independent’ report’s author. No other than McKinsey & Co. NHS NW London paid McKinsey & Co £150,000 to report on the performance of McKinsey & Co’s A&E closures’ strategy and programme. This is truly shocking and clearly corrupt.

Solace Mental Health Drop-in Centre to be Rebuilt with No Loss of Space or Capacity

Some good news at last for 80+ users of the Solace mental health drop-in centre in Bowman’s Close West Ealing. Last year it was threatened with closure. A complicated deal was put together which would have rebuilt the centre as a much smaller facility.

However, in November 2015 however Ealing Council announced a better deal which would rebuild the centre with no reduction of space or capacity. Existing staff will be retained and a larger kitchen built. Three new mental health residential units will also be built. This is going to cost £640,000 and the work will begin in summer 2016. There is still a capital bid to be won in early December but service users are now confident that Solace has been saved.

Jeremy Hunt MP Ducks His Southall Appearance on the Day 27,741 Junior Doctors Voted for Strike Action

Over 100 demonstrators assembled outside Southall Conservative Party HQ on the evening of 19 November 2015 to ‘welcome’ the Secretary of State for Health. The demonstration was organised by the Ealing Save Our NHS group (www.ealingsaveournhs.org.uk). Hunt’s visit to the Tories in Southall had been planned weeks ago. But he never turned up. His non-appearance was rather pathetic.

On the same day Sir Bruce Keogh, England’s top doctor, suggested Junior Doctors might not help on strike days during which there was a terrorist attack in England. What a crass suggestion this was. Understandably Juniors Doctors reacted to it with fury.

And on the day after – 20 November – the Health Secretary failed to turn up in the House of Commons to answer a question on the Junior Doctors’ strike. Maybe Hunt is on the way out.

By the way, a previous time a senior figure cancelled his attendance at a meeting in Ealing was on 19 April 2007. West London Tram (WLT) boss Christopher Dean was the no-show. On 2 August 2007 the WLT was cancelled. Let’s hope history repeats itself in some way and the Health and Social Care Act 2012, Hunt, SaHF, and Junior Doctors’ contract changes are all ‘cancelled’.

Private Care Homes Crisis Looming

Nine out of ten elderly and disabled people who are living in care homes are now in privately owned facilities. Many of these residents’ fees are paid for by Local Authorities. However with Local Authority budgets being squeezed the amounts being paid have gone down in recent years. This has lead to reduction in care home beds and care home closures.

A major alarm bell rang in July 2011 when Southern Cross, the then largest private care home group with 750 homes, went out of business. Now the current private care home leader, Four Seasons with 350 care homes, is having difficulties. In February 2015 it closed seven care homes in Northern Ireland. It is apparently struggling to pay its annual £26 million interest payment on its considerable borrowings.

Four Seasons, Bupa UK, HC-One and Care UK lobbied the Government for £3 billion to head off care home closures. However in November 2015 Chancellor Osborne promised less than £0.5 billion.

Care homes are also now dreading the implementation of the National Living Wage in April 2016 which will increase their operating costs and could well lead to bed and home closures.

Care home closures and bed reductions will directly impact the occupancy of NHS hospital beds. Bed blocking will increase and occupying hospital beds maybe the only available solution to care home closure.

How this all may impact NHS NW London and SaHF is hard to gauge. No doubt NHS London will pay a six figure sum to McKinsey & Co to write a report on how SaHF will handle this and the ‘lessons there are to be learned’……..

NHS WLMHT Whistle-blower Finally Vindicated as ‘Having Acted in Good Faith’

Dr Hayley Dare, a 20 year NHS veteran clinician, had concerns about bullying and harassment of staff at the West London Mental Health Trust (WLMHT). She voiced these concerns to WLMHT’s CEO Steve Shrubb in March 2013. WLMHT spent £130,000 fighting Dr Dare’s claims, even though NHS staff surveys supported her allegations. She was dismissed from her role as consultant clinical psychologist by means of a three line email.

In September 2014, Dr Dare lost her employment tribunal on a technicality. WLMHT pursued her for £100,000 in costs. Dr Dare appealed and on 6 November 2015 WLMHT conceded that she had acted in the public interest and in good faith. She received £10,000 back from the Trust. Both parties will now bear their own costs of the case.

WLMHT’S Chairman Nigel McCorkell resigned in July 2014 and its CEO Steve Shrubb took retirement in November 2015.

GP Conflicts of Interest

The front page lead of ‘The Times’ on 11 November 2015 detailed routine conflicts of interest by GPs who sit on Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). The scale of such conflicts is staggering – estimated at £2.4 billion in over 400 contracts.

I was not the only one to complain when Ealing CCG signed an agreement with Care UK’s Harmoni out of hours GP service. Some of the ECCG Governing Body GP members owned shares in Care UK. However they clearly felt no conflict. As they had declared the share ownership they seemed to feel that there were no corporate governance issues to be considered!

Inadequate Mental Health Spending by Local Authorities

The charity Mind has calculated that just 1% of public health budgets are spent on tackling mental health problems. Mind estimates that in 2015/2016 Local Authorities will spend just £40 million on mental health problems. £93 million will be spent on promoting physical activity; £111 million spent on tackling obesity; £160 million on anti-smoking measures; and £664 million on sexual health.

In fact some Local Authorities do not intend to spend any money at all on mental health services. It’s an accepted fact that one in five adults are suffering from a mental health problem. Those Local Authorities spending nothing on mental health problems ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Health bosses have already closed the much loved and needed Maternity Unit in Ealing Hospital. They want to close the Paediatrics Ward next summer – a disaster for sick children in our area. This is all part of the horrendous plans for North West London called (believe it or not) Shaping a Healthier Future.

They have already closed Accident and Emergency Departments at Central Middlesex and Hammersmith Hospitals and next to be axed is the blue light A&E at Ealing Hospital. The final aim is to cut 300 beds in Ealing, and sell most of the site
for flats. Charing Cross Hospital is to get the same treatment. When questioned, local health bosses claim all these services will be replaced by as yet undisclosed facilities ‘in the community’.

Support Our Doctors and Health Staff

“Junior doctors” (i.e. hospital doctors) were forced to vote for strike action to stop the Government increasing their hours and cutting pay. The Royal College of Nurses may be forced to take strike action for the first time in their history. Meanwhile GPs get constant increases in their workload as other health services are cutback.

NHS staff are working under tremendous pressure, only to be rewarded with pay freezes, staff shortages, re-organisations and cuts.

Defend our NHS – Support our NHS staff!

A Winter Crisis is Coming…

Here in North West London expensive Management consultants have been paid £33 million pounds for advice on
cutting and restructuring local services.  That money has come from our health budgets.
The NHS deficit is approaching £2 billion pounds after a 5 year freeze on NHS spending and paying management consultants. Private companies and agency staff makes it worse, not better.

The NHS is already at full capacity and  the winter season will push it into crisis.

What should the Government do? If you’re in a hole stop digging! That means stop cutting and privatising now!

[color-box color=” customcolorpicker=” rounded=true dropshadow=true]NHS Privatisation and Break up

In West London and across the country health services are being put on the market. Private companies can pick which services to run and profit from – usually by cutting costs. They even get to keep the NHS logo. Last year over £3.5 billion pounds worth of NHS services was awarded to these privateers, undermining the whole idea of a single united NHS with low overheads.

To make it worse, the Government is now giving entire chunks of the NHS to local councils, breaking it up into areas so that underfunded Councils get the blame for cuts rather than the Government. [/color-box]

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The long awaited Independent Healthcare Commission report on North West London was launched on 02/12/2015 at a press conference in the Royal Festival Hall.  Campaigners from Ealing and Hammersmith were delighted to hear the report endorsing everything we have been saying.  It was covered by the BBC, ITN, London and local press. Will Hunt listen?  We need to make him! We need to take every opportunity to use the report and expose the truth.

Key recommendations of the report include:

• The decision to close Ealing maternity unit should be reversed immediately
• Reopen the A&E department at Central Middlesex Hospital
• The National Audit Office should undertake a review of the programme’s value for money
• A new public consultation is needed as the proposals have changed significantly
• •Substantial investment should be made in GP and out-of-hospital services
• •Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals must retain full ‘blue light’ A&E services for the foreseeable future

The report can be read here

BBC coverage here

Ealing Save our NHS’s vice chair Oliver New  explains in this video what has been happening to Ealing Hospital and other NHS services in North West London.

While Ealing Save our NHS’s secretary Eve Turner describes how we have been campaigning against closures and privatisation in the borough.

Ealing Save Our NHS from Martin Woodford on Vimeo.

Brilliant – we frightened off Head NHS wrecker Jeremy Hunt!

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London North West London Hospitals NHS Trust in October 2015 boasted that Ealing Hospital has, ” a nationwide reputation as the largest British centre providing high-calibre training for junior paediatricians.” Yet that same Hospital Trust plans to close the in-patient children’s ward and cut back paediatric specialists (nurses , junior doctors and consultants) working at Ealing Hospital.

The closure of the ward means that:

• Blue light ambulances will not take children to Ealing A&E . They will be routed to other hospitals.
• Parents taking their children to Ealing A&E or the Urgent Care Centre will, if their child cannot receive the treatment it needs the child will be, stabilised, assessed and transferred to another hospital.
• Paediatric specialists will no longer be available on-site at Ealing Hospital to treat critically ill children.

Issue: 30

November 2015

This occasional newsletter is researched, written and edited by a group of concerned residents in Ealing, West London who want to preserve our NHS. We view the wholesale engagement of private, for-profit healthcare service suppliers as unnecessary, profligate and dangerous. Process improvement is what is needed in our NHS – not revolution.

Is the NHS NW London ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ Programme/Strategy Being ‘Disappeared’?

The ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) programme proposed in 2012 ‘…changes that will improve care both in hospitals and the community and will save many lives each year’. However the real goal was to cut spending by £1billion by 2015.

The SaHF web site at www.healthiernorthwestlondon.nhs.uk has been revamped and any ‘banner’ reference to ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ has been removed! The last SaHF reference is a 28 August 2015 news item ‘Shaping a healthier future – information for your area’. When you click on ‘…download your area Fact Pack here’ – nothing happens. No fact pack, no information – no SaHF any more perhaps?

What could this mean? Here are a few choices:

1. SaHF is now complete and is at its scheduled end. However this is clearly not the case
2. SaHF is being abandoned, possibly because the bloated £1.3 billion capital funding cannot be secured
3. SaHF is being abandoned because the perennially delayed 20+ business cases needing to be finalised will not stand up to public scrutiny.

First Mental Health Recovery House Opened in Ealing

On 9 October 2015 the West London Mental Health Trust (WLMHT) opened its first Recovery House in Ealing. Amadeus House in Corfton Road has 17 private bedrooms and 24/7 residential community-based care. It provides an alternative to hospital care and offers a half-way house between discharge from hospital and a return home. The home is being run by the charity Rethink Mental Illness. As well as bedrooms there is a beautiful garden, ‘quiet rooms’ for residents and a communal kitchen and lounge.

This recovery facility was originally to be located at the Lammas Centre on Mattock Lane. Although empty in recent years the centre has been owned and used by the NHS for over 60 years. Plans were drawn up to convert the building. The Council agreed these plans. Then, all of a sudden, the NHS/WLMHT sold the building for private development for £2.9 million.

Incidence of Tuberculosis (TB) is Still High in Ealing

The London Assembly has published World Health Organisation figures which show that parts of London still have high rates of TB. The worst borough is Newham with 107 cases out of 100,000 residents. Ealing is fourth worst with 62 cases, but parts of Ealing had rates of over 150. The UK average rate was 13. The rate in Iraq was 45.

Are Hunt, Osborne and Cameron Making Conscious Efforts to Antagonise All NHS Staff?

It is impossible to run a viable, sustainable universal healthcare service when huge swathes of NHS staff are disenchanted with current or future proposed conditions of work.

Prime Minister Cameron’s obsession with seven day working is clearly driving junior doctors and GPs out of their jobs and future careers in England. With regard to seven day working of GP surgeries, some of the pilot schemes indicate very low demand by patients for surgeries on Sundays. Also if you have a finite number (or reducing number) of GPs trying to ‘spread’ service across seven days rather than five, this must degrade the service during week days.

Junior doctors say that the new terms and conditions now being offered specify a 90 hour week and will result in between 15% and 40% loss of earnings. They think the Government proposals are dangerous for patients, doctors and the health service. The BMA is balloting junior doctors as from 5 November 2015 about taking industrial action. Over 50,000 medics will have two weeks during which to cast their vote. Thousands of junior doctors demonstrated outside Parliament on 28 September 2015 and on 17 October 20,000 marched in London to support the junior doctors! On that day 1,000s demonstrated in Nottingham and 100s in Belfast. Hundreds demonstrated in Leeds town centre on 28 September and on 28 October. Around 1,000 demonstrated in the centre of Manchester on 29 September. On 24 October 4,000 junior doctors and their supporters marched through Newcastle centre. Other packed meetings of junior doctors were held in September and October in Liverpool, Newmarket, Southampton and Durham. Meetings in November are scheduled in Birmingham, Taunton and Oxford. Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt MP’s response to these demos is that junior doctors don’t understand the good deal they are being offered. His stance is both patronising and pathetic.

As for nurses, those from non-EU countries will be deported, if after six years in this country, they are not earning more than £35,000 per year. The Royal College of Nursing calculates that 6,620 non-EU nurses will have to be deported by 2020. The Government temporarily eased the situation last month by lifting the ban on recruiting nurses from overseas. A Unison survey earlier this year revealed that 55% of hospital nurses are caring for eight or more patients on night shifts.

The Unison survey also revealed that a third of ambulance service paramedics have taken time off for stress.

Chancellor Osborne wants to reduce tax credits. This will cut the wages of low paid workers, who will no doubt include hospital ancillary workers such as porters and cleaners and GP surgery receptionists. Some families will lose more than £3,000 per year. Heartening and inspiring pleading in the House of Lords on 26 October gave Osborne a bloody nose on the Tax Credits Bill and stopped the Bill becoming an Act of Parliament on that day. Baroness Hollis performed like a saint and Tory Earl Howe attempted bullying tactics, but was publicly humiliated.

According to Roy Lilley (nhsManagers.net) there are currently 33 Chief Executive posts vacant in the NHS.

In October 2015, The Guardian’s ‘ClockOff’ survey revealed that of all public sector workers those working in the NHS are the most stressed. 61 % reported they are stressed all or most of their time at work. 26% don’t take any break during the working day. 96% work beyond their contracted hours – on average working five extra hours per week.

So the Government has managed to stress out and upset NHS bosses, doctors, nurses, paramedics and ancillary workers. Is this any way to run our national health service?

‘For Emergency use only: A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only’

NHS posters with this headline are appearing. The 195 bus (Southall to Brentford) is displaying one. Just what are these posters all about?

If I hurt my leg (possibly fracturing it), because it’s not a ‘life-threatening’ condition should I not go to a hospital A&E unit?

If I’m in pain and clearly ill, am I supposed to diagnose myself as to whether I am close to death and suitable to be treated at a hospital A&E unit?

As most hospital A&E units seem to have Urgent Care Centres (UCCs) co-located with them surely people who have been involved in accidents and are in pain should not be discouraged from going to hospital?

Just where are those people hurt in accidents supposed to go if not to hospital?

NHS Better Care Fund (BCF): Probably Frozen in 2016: Possibly Redundant in 2017

NHS England has announced its intention to freeze the BCF National Government contribution in 2016/17 at £3.8 billion. The BCF is an attempt to integrate NHS healthcare and Local Authority social care. The BCF was announced in June 2013 and the grand hope was that it would be spent in such a way as to reduce emergency admissions to hospitals. The fund amalgamated some existing NHS funds (£3.8 billion) and Local Authority funds (almost £2 billion) to create an initial annual budget of £5.3 billion. The dream was that the BCF would lead to savings of £1 billion each year.

In November 2014 the National Audit Office (NAO) branded the BCF a shambles. The NAO could not find any evidence as to exactly how these cash and A&E savings could be achieved. In February 2015, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) concluded that the initial intention of the BCF – to transform local health and social care services by pooling resources – had been replaced by the intention to protect NHS resources. The PAC echoed serious concerns by Local Authorities that BCF was failing to protect adult social care services.

The NHS England BCF web site stopped publishing ‘user’ comments and questions in April 2015 and the last NHS reply to one of them was in February 2015. The latest FAQ information was published in August 2014.

It now seems the world has moved on and that BCF will be quietly buried as a failure. Regional devolution, capitalised budgets allocated directly to providers and integrated personal commissioning are, according to ‘Health Services Journal’, the bolder solutions which will make BCF redundant.

TTIP and ISDS Still Pose Major Threats to Keeping Our NHS Public

TTIP is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Its supposed purpose is to make it easier and cheaper for EU companies to sell to US customers and vice versa. Proponents talk about cutting down on red tape, simplifying regulatory processes and increasing international trading revenues. Critics say that TTIP will lead to the adoption of lower environmental, health and safety standards. Even the most optimistic financial projections for TTIP reveal very small increases in transatlantic trading sales and profits.

ISDS stands for Investor State Dispute Settlement. It gives foreign investors and foreign trading companies the right to sue nation states in private arbitration courts for any action which could damage their profit expectations. ISDS emerged in Germany in 1959 when the first Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) was signed with Pakistan. Its history however goes back much further and its existence is a response to the inadequacy of international law in protecting the property of foreigners. International arbitration has been used to resolve claims by foreign investors since the 18th century. ISDS is embedded in 3,400 investment agreements worldwide. The UK has 94 BITs almost all of which include ISDS provisions.

TTIP/ISDS negotiations between EU and US officials have been taking place behind closed doors for months and months. Opposition to TTIP/ISDS is particularly strong in Austria and Germany. For the EU to ratify any TTIP/ISDS agreement all EU nation states will have to sign up to it. Proposed ISDS provisions in TTIP have a 20 year timescale and would be binding even if the UK exited the EU.

The concern for the NHS is that US healthcare giants will use TTIP/ISDS to sue the UK government if they feel they are being excluded from bidding for NHS contracts or when they lose such contracts.

20 UK Councils have voted to reject TTIP. In London only one Council has done this – Lewisham.

On 7 October 2015 a European Citizens’ anti-TTIP petition was presented to the European Commission in London. With 3,263,920 signatories it was the largest petition of its kind.

On 26 October 2015 ‘The Independent’ announced that leaders of Labour, UKIP, SNP and Green parties had all signed a public appeal for the NHS to be excluded from any TTIP/ISDS agreement. Prime Minister Cameron refused to sign.

Issue: 29

October 2015

This occasional newsletter is researched, written and edited by a group of concerned residents in Ealing, West London who want to preserve our NHS. We view the wholesale engagement of private, for-profit healthcare service suppliers as unnecessary, profligate and dangerous. Process improvement is what is needed in our NHS – not revolution.

80% of NHS Hospitals are Running at a Loss. If the NHS were a ‘Real’ Market These Hospitals would Close Down

The farcical notion that the NHS can be run on market lines is being crucially exposed by most NHS hospitals being deemed to be failing. The biggest ‘failure’ to date is the £135 million annual loss at Barts Hospital. These failures revolve around the impossibility of balancing the books while maintaining clinical services at the level expected.

With an effective annual uplift in the NHS budget of just 1% set against the 3/4 % annual increase in patient demand, no doubt all NHS hospitals will make losses next year. Add to this the proposed 30% reduction in pay for junior doctors, which will increase staff emigration, turnover, recruitment and agency staff costs, then the losses will exceed the current year’s.

When will the Government accept the reality that providing a state healthcare system is a cost centre not a chocolate teapot of a profit centre?

‘Of Course, Shaping a Healthier Future is Dead In The Water,’ Said Sir Richard Sykes

The Save Charing Cross and Hammersmith Hospitals Group have reported this remark made to them at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust AGM on 9 September 2015. Sir Richard is the Trust’s Chair.

If this is true one must ask the question what is the new NHS NW London strategy? Will Charing Cross and Ealing Hospitals remain as Major Hospitals? Will the two A&E units survive? Will the ailing Out Of Hospital strategy be ditched? Will the architects of SaHF fall on their swords?

NHS Ealing Hospital Urgent Care Centre: Trial by TV and then by Ealing Council

Ealing Council’s Health and Adult Social Services Standing Scrutiny Panel met on 9 September 2015. The feature of the meeting was the scrutiny of Ealing Hospital’s Urgent Care Centre (UCC). This scrutiny was triggered by the damning UCC revelations by patients and staff in the ITV ‘Despatches’ programme which was screened on 22 July 2015. Ealing Council summoned the UCC operator Care UK, the NHS entity managing the Care UK contract  Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group (ECCG), ITV and the independent programme maker to attend. Care UK senior management and ECCG senior management attended. The ITV folks and the programme maker failed to turn up. The grilling took 70 minutes.

Highlights for me were:

+ An annoying thread (which ran through the whole session) was talk of ‘allegations’ made in the TV programme. These were not allegations, they were video footage of evidence.

+ The Care UK MD said that Care UK had never made a profit in all the four years of the UCC contract. My business background tells me that suppliers making a loss is an unhealthy and unsustainable state of affairs. Also, if her statement is in actual fact true, then unless there was more money on the table why would Care UK bid to continue the UCC contract from 2016 to 2021? And if this were the case, why should they burst a gut for the remaining 10 months of the contract?

+ Care UK pretty much suggested that the journalist had somehow tricked Care UK staff to say and do inappropriate things. This smacks of a classic symptom of denial.

+ ECCG and Care UK gave the impression that they really did not think there were problems with the service. One of the Councillors suggested there was a systemic ‘cultural’ problem amongst UCC staff. What he wanted to see was evidence of Care UK attempting to change this culture. Care UK had no response to this well made point.

+ Care UK’s MD was asked what were patients to do if they were not happy with the service at Ealing Hospital UCC. Her response ‘go to Brent UCC’ brought gasps of shock from members of the public in the audience. It really was a crass response.

+ ECCG has commissioned an independent review of aspects of the UCC service and ECCG’s relationship with UCC/Care UK. As ECCG is responsible for monitoring Care UK, and in fact paying it, it seems inappropriate for ECCG to be specifying the terms of this review or even commissioning it. It’s a bit like marking your own homework. A formal review should have been commissioned by someone other than the NHS – Ealing Council or Healthwatch Ealing possibly.  Let’s not also forget that money paid to consultants to carry out a review could have been spent on providing healthcare services. ECCG also failed to confirm it would place the review into the public domain.

+ There are only 10 months left of the five year Care UK UCC contract. Ealing PCT chose Care UK to set up and run the UCC in 2011. ECCG subsequently inherited the contract. What will matter soon is who will run the UCC as from August 2016 to July 2021. This is a period during which, as far as we know, Ealing Hospital A&E will close (as per the NHS NW London Shaping a Healthier Future strategy), much of Ealing Hospital will be demolished and a new ‘Local Hospital’ will be built on the site. However, amazingly, ECCG at the meeting stated that Ealing Hospital A&E will not close down. But this is all semantic gobbledegook, as some time in the medium term flashing blue light ambulances will not arrive at Ealing Hospital and there will be no acute/ICU consultants and no acute/ICU beds. And in the well established vocabulary of the NHS this amounts to no A&E.

Ealing Council Scrutiny also Highlights Areas of Concern for Children’s Health in Ealing

Areas of concern were MMR vaccination rates, low birth weights for babies, 4-5 year old obesity, under 5 year olds’ tooth decay, 0 –4 year olds’ A&E attendance and poverty amongst dependent under 20 year olds.

Ex-Ealing Hospital Midwives Overworked and Unhappy After Relocation to Paddington and Isleworth.

Anecdotal evidence is reaching us about former Ealing Hospital midwives being overworked and unhappy working at St Mary’s and West Middlesex Hospitals. The break-up of the happy and successful Maternity Unit at Ealing Hospital will forever be a stain on the ailing NHS NW London ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) strategy.

Independent Healthcare Commission (IHC) to Launch its Final SaHF Report on 21 November 2015

The IHC – also known as the Mansfield Commission – will reveal its final report at an event at Hammersmith Town Hall on Saturday 21 November 2015. The commission was set up by Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham and Hounslow Councils in 2014. It has spent months collecting evidence on the implementation and performance of the 2012 NHS NW London ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) strategy. The completion of the final report has been delayed by the NHS submitting additional information after the submission deadline.

John Lister, one of the IHC commissioners, addressed Ealing Save Our NHS on 22 September 2015. Some of the points he highlighted included:

+ SaHF cost estimates have risen from £120 million in 2012 to £1.3 billion in 2015

+ Some 28 final SaHF Business Cases have been consistently promised and not delivered

+ SaHF has effectively stalled because the Treasury has not signed off the £1.3 billion capital costs. The closure of Central Middlesex A&E, Hammersmith Hospital A&E and Ealing Hospital Maternity Unit is all SaHF can do without cash for new build.

Neighbourly Care Southall (NCS) Wins Ealing Council Grant of £1+ Million to Provide Care Services for the Elderly Across Ealing. Appeal By Age UK Ealing is Rejected

Apparently the reason why NCS won the grant award and won the appeal is because its proposal was adjudged to better meet Ealing Council’s needs. It seems Ealing Council wants a single organisation to provide elderly care services in all seven Districts of Ealing embracing all major religious and ethnic groups.

NCS, now re-branded as Neighbourly Care, has 3,500 members in Southall alone, with 76 different countries of birth. It suspects that it is the most multi-cultural group operating in the UK. It plans to set up 16 community hubs for the elderly throughout Ealing and is specially targeting Districts which have historically had little support, including Greenford, Northolt, Perivale and parts of Acton.

Age UK Ealing has received significant annual grant funding from Ealing Council for years. However as from April 2016 it will receive no council funding for providing services to the elderly over the following three years. Ealing Council announced this in July 2015. Age UK appealed and lost its appeal in September 2015. It is only because of prudent financial management over the years that Age UK Ealing will be able to continue operating its range of services – giving it time to search for alternative sources of funding.

One of the big losers through withdrawal of Ealing Council grant support is Southall Day Centre, which has lost 75% of its funding. The centre, founded in 1978, is affiliated to the housing organisation Catalyst which loans the centre premises. The centre is run by seven organisations including Age UK Ealing, MIND, Mencap, the Anglo Caribbean Society and the Centre for Armenian Information and Advice. The centre was the first one in the UK to tailor its services for older people from the Asian community. It has over 2,000 members. However it’s alleged that the centre exclusively supports the Punjabi community. If true then this may have counted against it. The loss of grant will mean the closure of its only two sites in Shackleton Road and Western Road. So a valuable community service operating successfully for 37 years will disappear.

CQC Rates West London Mental Health Trust (WLMHT) as ‘Requires Improvement’

Following a five day inspection in June 2015, The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has reported that the WLMHT requires improvement in relation to its being safe, effective and well led. It also found fault in the Trust’s failure to keep proper records. CQC also rated the Trust’s running of the Broadmoor high security hospital as inadequate. It found inadequate staffing levels at the hospital. CQC had concerns about patients being physically restrained too often and spending too much time in their rooms.

WLMHT was though credited by CQC for being caring and responsive. CQC found many areas of WLMHT where care was delivered by hard-working, caring and compassionate staff.

NHS care.data Boss Kelsey Jumps Ship

Tim Kelsey, NHS England’s National Information Director, has announced he is leaving his job and this country for Australia. Kelsey is responsible for the care.data shambles. care.data was supposed to help the NHS to share medical records. Kelsey launched the project in 2013 and it has consistently been beset with problems. The biggest problems have been the sale of medical records to private companies, data insecurity and an unsuitable patient opt-out system. In February 2014 it was revealed that 47 million NHS patients’ records were sold to insurers by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. In September 2015 the care.data pilot trials were halted by the Government.

Kelsey initially worked as a journalist and co-founded Dr Foster Intelligence in 2000. Dr Foster collects and publishes performance data on healthcare services. In 2006 the Department of Health acquired a 50% stake in Dr Foster for £12 million. Some said the price was 50% too high. After a spell with the NHS gravy train called McKinsey & Co, he joined the Cabinet Office and then the NHS in May 2012. In Australia Kelsey will be re-united with Dr Foster as he joins Telstra Health who acquired Dr Foster in March 2015.

Informed sources claim that Kelsey is leaving at a time when serious questions regarding consent and transparency concerning NHS England’s flagship data programme remain unanswered.

Cancer Diagnosis Within Four Weeks: But What About Mental Health Diagnosis Targets?

This is an admirable new target for cancer patients. A similar target needs to be set for mentally ill patients. There are an estimated 2.3 million cancer sufferers in the UK. But there are probably three times that number of mentally ill people. It’s true that cancer can lead to an early death and terrible suffering. However mental ill health can mean a lifetime of suffering.

One probably cannot make direct comparisons between diagnosis for cancer and diagnosis for mental illness. There are currently no ‘tests’ for mental health problems and mental health diagnosis is not a straightforward process. For mental health the four week target should be an assessment by a psychiatrist.

An encouraging sign for mental health from the new labour Party opposition team is the creation of the new post of Shadow Minister for Mental Health. This reflects Jeremy Corbyn’s support for increased expenditure on mental health services. Luciana Berger MP has been appointed to this position.

Where Does the Provision of New Health Care  Services Fit Into the Planning System?

What planning system you might ask. Statutory Local Plans and Neighbourhood Plans are typically spatial plans which stretch over 15 years. Our regional plan – the London Plan – has a planning window of 26 years. However NHS England seems to have a five year plan. NHS NW London’s ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) plan was initially conceived with a three year plus time frame, beginning in 2013.

A big part of the SaHF plan involves demolishing some major hospitals and replacing in-hospital healthcare services with ‘Out-Of-Hospital’ (OOH) healthcare. OOH services need premises in which patients can be treated. These premises could be our own homes, existing or new GP surgeries or new community healthcare centres.

Ealing’s 2012 Local Plan targets building 12,400 new homes by 2026. To service the healthcare needs of the 30,000 new patients who will occupy these new homes will need 14 additional GPs in Ealing. We’ll need expanded and new GP surgeries, new community healthcare centres and more GP practice nurses. To supply premises there will have to be some change of use obtained for existing buildings and land for new build. So where is the 15 year spatial plan for NHS services in Ealing? I can’t find one and I suspect it does not exist.

However according to the London-wide Local Medical Committee (representing GPs in 27 London boroughs), the GP service in London has reached saturation point. Add to this that 140 London GP surgeries are at risk of closure over the next few years. Also the number of GP practice nurses in London is declining. In February 2015 London’s population was sized at 8.6 million. ONS predicts that by 2030 the population will reach 10 million. This translates to over one million additional NHS patients.

So ..to use an aviation analogy we are not only flying blind we are also running out of fuel…

Issue: 28

September 2015

This occasional newsletter is researched, written and edited by a group of concerned residents in Ealing, West London who want to preserve our NHS. We view the wholesale engagement of private, for-profit healthcare service suppliers as unnecessary, profligate and dangerous. Process improvement is what is needed in our NHS – not revolution.

Is NHS A&E Performance Data in Ealing Unfit for Purpose?

The NHS is riddled with targets and performance is measured against these targets. Waiting more than four hours for treatment in an A&E unit is deemed unacceptable performance. A target of 95% of patients waiting less than four hours is a well established metric. Clearly all managers at all levels of any organisation need ready access to relevant and accurate performance data in order to manage, but evidence is increasingly coming to light which leads me to believe that much of the NHS NW London A&E performance data is becoming variously irrelevant and ‘hidden’.

+ Aggregating A&E and Urgent Care Centre Data

Common sense tells us that the key A&E performance data is the data relating to Type-1 patients i.e. those who are the most unwell. However the only A&E performance data quoted by NHS NW London/Shaping a Healthier Future is aggregated data of all A&E Types and Urgent Care Centre (UCC) data. This is a pretty useless metric. UCCs are not A&E units and their relevance to A&E units is tenuous. In virtually all cases UCCs act as triage units for A&E units.

+ Discontinuing the Publication of Weekly Performance Data

On a very hot day in July 2015 the A&E unit at Ealing Hospital was over run and performed very badly. If weekly performance data had been published this poor performance would have shown up. However monthly data would not have revealed this dip in performance.

+ Aggregating Ealing Hospital A&E and Northwick Park A&E Performance Data

Since the merger of the two hospitals into a single Trust, A&E performance data of both hospitals is aggregated together. There is much recent evidence which shows that Ealing Hospital A&E performance is consistently better than that of Northwick Park Hospital A&E. However merging the two units’ performance data together overstates Northwick Park’s A&E performance and downgrades Ealing Hospital’s A&E performance.

+ Untimely Publication of A&E Performance Data

As of 7 September 2015 NHS NW London Hospital A&E performance data for July 2015 had still not been published.

And for the record, across the whole of NHS NW London the 95% performance target remained unmet from September 2014 to June 2015. It reached its nadir at 82% in January 2015. For Type-1 patients in January 2015 it plummeted to 53%.

Reflections on Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group

One of the many strange anomalies of the current NHS organisation is that all the knowledgeable people never get round a table to discuss keeping us all healthy and alive. It’s true that some local GP doctors sit on Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) Governing Bodies – but hospital doctors do not. CCGs are a part of a ‘confrontational’ system with NHS service purchases on one side and service suppliers (NHS Trusts, charities and private healthcare suppliers) on the other side. This artificial separation of buying and supplying is of course a device to facilitate the entry of private healthcare suppliers into the NHS.

I’ve attended a few Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group (ECCG) Governing Body meetings. The meetings last over four hours and there are pages and pages of material full of unexplained acronyms you need to read prior to the meetings. Often there has been very little discussion and few arguments. I’ve never witnessed a formal vote on any issue. At one of these meetings only 7 of the 27 ECCG attendees actually spoke. All this persuades me that topic discussions and decisions are made in other private meetings.

Ealing Council to Confront Care UK and ECCG Publicly About Ealing Hospital Urgent Care Centre Failings Revealed by ITV

The London Borough of Ealing’s Health and Adult Scrutiny Panel (H&ASP) is holding a public meeting on Wednesday 9 September 2015. At this meeting the H&ASP will hold Care UK and ECCG to account for the Ealing Hospital Urgent Care Centre failings revealed in an ITV documentary broadcast on 22 July. The meeting starts at 7:00pm and it will be held in Committee Room 3 at Ealing Town Hall.

Age UK Ealing Appeals Against Ealing Council’s Plan to Starve the Charity of Funding

Age UK Ealing’s day services for older people are still in danger of imminent closure. Ealing Council decided in July 2015 to no longer provide financial support for Age UK Ealing. The charity launched three appeals against this decision and on 25 August 2015 Ealing Council informed it that two of the appeals have been successful. It has to resubmit its bid by 31 August 2015 and should hear by 11 September 2015 whether Ealing Council has changed its mind.

Ealing GP Surgery News

+ NHS Cuckoo Lane Surgery in Hanwell is rated ‘Outstanding’ by CQC

The surgery is one of only 36 highly rated surgeries out of 1,100 inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The provision of mental health services at Cuckoo Lane has been singled out for praise. 19 patients with mental health problems, who would previously have been treated in secondary care, are being treated at the surgery instead this year. Rob White, a primary care mental health worker with the West London Mental Health Trust, holds clinics at the surgery twice a month.

+ NHS Somerset Medical Centre in Southall is Shut Down by CQC

CQC ordered the closure of the centre because of ‘concerns about patient safety’. The centre was given two days notice of closure. The centre’s Dr Dodhy Bashir said that the order was made concerning ‘paperwork and policies’. CQC stated that it was a temporary suspension.

Charing Cross Hospital

Andy Slaughter MP continues to try and discover what the future might be for this hospital. The definition of ‘local hospital A&E’- promised for a future Charing Cross Hospital – is just not available. It seems it could be till autumn 2016 before this is revealed. There is no business plan to examine for the new local hospital. Apparently this will not be finalised till at least autumn 2017. Andy Slaughter has issued Freedom of Information requests for both the details of the A&E services and the business plan.

Independent Healthcare Commission

This body, set up by Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham and Hounslow Councils, spent months collecting evidence on the implementation and performance of NHS NW London’s ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) strategy. The body’s final report will be launched at a press conference in late October 2015.

The initial report was published on 26 March 2015. It found serious failings in SaHF implementation in the areas of access to care, quality of care, the business case and flawed business processes.

One hopes that the Local Authorities will make constructive use of this report and use it to hold the NHS and the Government to account. Independent Healthcare Commission witness statements and hearings’ transcripts can be viewed at www.bpv.org.uk

Care UK Cries ‘Foul’ When It Loses Out to an NHS Trust

Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust has won an £multi-million contract to provide a range of elective NHS services. The commissioned services include general surgery, orthopaedics and ophthalmology for 965,000 people. Four Clinical Commissioning Groups awarded the contract. Care UK, the incumbent service supplier, has lodged a complaint with NHS Monitor. Care UK says that the CCGs’ refusal to renew its contract and switch to the Trust was discriminatory. Keep Our NHS Public has accused Care UK of being a bad loser.

Massive Nurse Shortage in London Causing Stress, Bed Closures and Huge Agency and Overtime Costs

Hospital wards and operating theatres in London are being closed because of a shortage of nurses – reported the ‘London Evening Standard’ on 30 July 2015. At the country’s largest NHS Trust – Barts Health – there were 1,173 nurse vacancies in June 2015. The Trust runs five east London hospitals. The situation has deteriorated since March 2015 when there were 562 nurse vacancies.

‘Health Service Journal’ reports nationally that more than two-thirds of hospitals failed to have sufficient numbers of nurses working at any one time. Also 83% of acute trusts have failed to meet their own safe staffing targets.

Monitor Tells NHS Trusts to ‘Ensure Vacancies Are Filled Only When Essential’

This is all about heading off a predicted £2 billion deficit for 2015/16. Monitor has also told Trusts to ensure that safe staffing guidance has been adopted in a ‘proportionate and appropriate way’. ‘Health Service Journal’ (HSJ) readers’ comments are that Trusts will just ignore this ‘advice’. As for safe staffing guidance surely it is followed or not followed. If not followed then no doubt patients and staff are put at risk.

Safe staffing guidelines for A&E were expected to be published on 30 July 2015. On 29 July 2015 HSJ was told that NICE would not, after all, publish these guidelines. NICE went on to say that an ‘NHS Improvement’ release would publish the A&E staffing guidelines later this year.

Treasury To Cut Annual Public Health Grant to Local Authorities by £200 Million: Impact Could Cost £1 Billion

August 2015 was the month for public consultation on the proposed 6.2% cuts announced in June 2015. This consultation is unlikely to stop the cuts. Expert commentators estimate that these cuts could generate costs exceeding £1 billion – due to cuts in many local services and rapid increases in preventable diseases. Services affected are likely to include child health, mental health, drug and alcohol, sexual health and health improvement.

All this seems completely at odds with the heart of the NHS Five Year Forward View, which emphasise the importance of prevention and public health. (Story source – the Kings Fund).

Thousands of Blood Donors Turned Away by NHS – And 40% Slump in Volunteer Donors

Between June 2013 and June 2104, 6,798 people who wanted to give blood complained to the NHS that they did not have their blood taken. Apparently shortage of staff – lack of appointments and cancelled appointments – was the NHS excuse. There have been plenty of warnings about a potential shortage of blood stocks. (Story source – Keep Our NHS Public).

Corbyn on the NHS

All polls are predicting that in September 2015 Jeremy Corbyn MP will become the Leader of the Labour Party. As such, his views on the NHS are very important to those of us who want to save our NHS.

Jeremy’s wants for the NHS include:

+ protecting the principle of universal healthcare which is free at the point of use

+ removing any element of privatisation in the NHS

+ increased support for mental health

+ more money for hospitals, doctors and nurses

+ removing the PFI burden from the NHS

+ improving public health

+ the service not to be diminished to a service of last resort for the poorest people

+ supporting the NHS Reinstatement Bill – a Bill which he co-sponsored.

I sat in Ealing Town Hall on 17th August 2015 along with 400 others and heard Jeremy’s loud, impassioned plea for the NHS ‘….away with the market opportunity!’

Cost of Use of Private Ambulances by NHS Ambulance Trusts soars to Over £40 Million in 2014/15

In 2010/11 the figure was around £16 million. These figures do not include the £16.5 million spent on volunteer ambulance services including St John’s and the Red Cross. The College of Paramedics said that the pressure of increased demand, staff leaving and lack of training places has forced Trusts to rely on private services and overseas recruitment.

CQC Keeps Closing Care Homes and Shipping Out Fragile Elderly People in the Dark

Roy Lilley (nhsManagers.net) tells the horrendous story of CQC doing this TWICE!

Just before Christmas 2014 CQC closed Merok Park Care Home in Surrey. They shipped out the patients in the evening, in the dark. It was freezing and 48 hours later an 85 year old patient died.

At 6:30pm on Friday 7 August 2015, CQC closed the Old Village School Care Home in Bedfordshire. Transfers were carried out over the following 6 hours. Complications developed for some patients and they finished up in A&E in Bedford Hospital.

Why couldn’t these closures and transfers be started in the morning, in the day light? Why couldn’t interim management be put into these places – local social services, the NHS or nominees – to run the failing home so that adequate time, care and planning could be given to make effective, safe and risk free transfers to other care homes?