We totally reject the claims by local Health bosses that it is safe to close the Children’s ward at Ealing hospital on June 30th.  We believe that children may die as a result.
The Clinical Commissioning Group and their management consultants are making unsubstantiated claims so as to cut vital services.  They were publicly proved wrong that it was OK to close the A&Es at Central Middlesex and Hammersmith Hospitals. Instead, delays for emergency treatment in North West London shot right up and became the highest in the whole country. Their investigation into that disaster was simply passed over to the same private companies who had recommended the cuts.
The closure of Maternity and the Children’s Ward is part of a plan to prepare closure of 300 beds and the A&E at Ealing Hospital.

Closing the Charlie Chaplin children’s ward and removing the paediatric consultants and other specialist staff would mean that local children would no longer be treated at Ealing E&E.

The CCG say ambulances will simply take children elsewhere, but 93% of children are taken to hospital by their families, not by ambulance so when there is an emergency cases would be subject to serious delays.  They would have to be assessed at the non-specialist Urgent Care Centre, then await transport to another hospital – ambulances won’t do this- then await assessment and treatment at another hospital.

Even apart from the disastrous risk to emergency cases, other sick children will end up in hospital miles from home.  How could a working parent from Southall or Hanwell possibly look after a child at home and visit another child in Northwick Park Hospital?

The introduction of a Rapid Access Clinic is no substitute for the existing service.  It will only see a handful of children, it won’t deal with emergency cases and it can only be accessed by GPs.  The CCG are using it as a smoke screen.

22,000 children are taken to Ealing Hospital annually. 6,000 are seen by A&E.  How on earth will these be taken to other hospitals?
This closure is terrible news for local families and it should be stopped until basic questions are dealt with.

At our rally last Saturday, Consultant Paediatrician Tony O’Sullivan said:

“No paediatricians, no guarantee of paediatric nurses, I just think that this is absolutely disgraceful people will die from that and some of them will be children.” 

At the end of our short march on Saturday 12th March, a rally took place outside Perceval House in Ealing. We have a short video with excepts of some of the speeches.

Ealing Save Our NHS, some speakers from Ealing Save Our NHS on Vimeo.

Consultant Paediatrician Tony O’Sullivan said:

“No paediatricians, no guarantee of paediatric nurses, I just think that this is absolutely disgraceful people will die from that and some of them will be children.”

Mary Lynch a nurse and a mother of three children added:

“A few years ago, out of the blue, my son had a grand mal seizure, it was extremely frightening even for me. The ambulance team came, stabilised him and then we were brought to Ealing where a whole team were waiting for us and brought us to the Paediatric Ward. And it did not happen once, it happened twice. For me, I have two other children at home, I had to go with James to the Paediatric Ward and leave them on their own at home and it meant a lot to me that I could get home quickly…”

Helen Laycock a junior doctor and mother living in Ealing said:

“I am sorry Mr Hunt and Mr Cameron, we provide an emergency 7 day NHS already. I should know. I have worked nights and weekends for the last ten years providing it. So don’t tell us that we don’t”.

Merril Hammer from Save our Hospitals Hammersmith and Charing Cross also spoke at the rally:

“Just as the closure of A&Es across North West London shows disregard to the health needs of local people. Just as the closure of the Maternity  Unit in Ealing denies the needs of young women and their families to local provision. the proposedclosure of the Paediatric Ward demostrates only too clearly that the needs of children of ordinary people are not important to the ultra wealthy who form our Government. “

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Issue: 34

March 2016

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.

What is Going to Happen to Ealing Hospital?

In 2012 NHS NW London’s ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ proposed to downgrade Ealing Hospital from a ‘Major’ to a ‘Local’ Hospital. What has happened so far is the removal of Maternity birthing services in 2015 and the threat to discontinue any services for children in June 2016.

According to rumours picked up by Andy Slaughter Hammersmith & Fulham MP more departments will close at Ealing Hospital but the building of a new Local Hospital on the site will not happen. The closed departments will just be mothballed. Of course most hospital Trusts are in debt and the NHS bosses say that those hospital Trusts that don’t balance their books by the end on March 2016 will get no extra cash in 2016/2017. Ealing Hospital’s Trust is hopelessly in debt. In fact John Lister’s research in early February 2016 reveals the debt for London North West Healthcare Trust to be the second largest in England at £76.3 million. As such no ‘new’ money’ will be forthcoming for demolition and new build on the Ealing site – or for anywhere else in Ealing.

It is clear that daily heroics are taking place at Ealing Hospital A&E. Few medics want to take on a permanent position at the hospital because of the three years of continuous uncertainty about its survival. NHS bosses have capped Agency temporary staff use. What immediately follows from this Catch22 scenario are staff shortages, tired staff and higher risk of staff errors. Staff will become increasingly susceptible to stress, domestic disruption and physical and mental illnesses.

Care UK, who were shown to be incompetent at Ealing Hospital’s Urgent Care Centre (UCC) in an ITV documentary in July 2015, take their leave of the hospital sometime before the end of April 2016. Replacing them to run the UCC is the Greenbrook Healthcare Consortium. Greenbrook Healthcare looks quite experienced on paper. They have managed aggregated GP practices since 2007 and UCCs since 2012. Greenbrook manages UCCs in Hounslow, Harrow, Bromley & Beckenham, Kensington & Chelsea, Hillingdon, Woolwich, Orpington and Surrey.

If A&E does close down completely at Ealing Hospital, the impact on Ealing residents and A&E performance in north west London will be devastating. Quite simply more people will suffer pain and die unnecessarily.

Musings on Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group (ECCG)

ECCG  will soon be five years old. Many of us have been consistently critical of it. We believe the ECCG costs  £10 million a year. I recently spent some time reviewing the ECCG web site. Below are some of my reflections on the web site’s content.

There are still only six GPs on the 20 person ECCG Governing Body. So much for it being a GP-led body. It is quite extraordinary that only 10 of the 20 Governing Body members have their pictures displayed on the site. For seven of the body there are no biographical or qualification details. Is the turnover of the staff on the Governing Body really so rapid that the web site content maintainers can’t keep up?

On the ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ web page this sentence appears:

‘The Department of Health is expecting to review these (SaHF business) cases during the second half of 2014’.

The sentence suggests that it was written before July 2014. Did this review ever take place? No clues are given as to when the final business cases for the 2012 conceived SaHF will be published.

There are also many references to ‘Better Care, Close to Home: our three year strategy for co-ordinated, high quality care out of hospital’. However the Strategy details ‘initiatives’ which were to be completed by March 2015, with cumulative savings of £27 million. There is no mention of completing these initiatives and achieving these savings in the ECCG 2014/2015 Accounts. Goodness knows whether these initiatives were completed or are still to be completed. As for the savings…. if they had been achieved ECCG would have trumpeted this from on high.

On the ‘News’ web page what’s not there sticks out like a sore thumb. For example:

+  No reference to ECCG’s response to the damning ITV documentary on Ealing Hospital Urgent care Centre (UCC) in July 2015

+ No reference to Greenbrook Healthcare Consortium taking over the running of Ealing Hospital UCC by April 2016

+ No reference to the fact that children’s services (including A&E) at Ealing Hospital will close in June 2016.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council Leads The Way in Pursuing the Mansfield Independent Healthcare Commission Recommendations

In 2012 NHS NW London announced its ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) programme. SaHF proposed changes that would ‘improve care both in hospitals and in the community’. Put crudely the strategy revolved around demolishing some hospitals, reducing the number of hospital A&E units and hospital beds, and replacing acute hospital care with ‘Out of Hospital’ care. Opposition by local citizens to the proposed changes was immediate and has been extensive and continuous. In fact this monthly newsletter came into being in May 2013 to document SaHF’s ‘progress’ along with the impact of a constant stream of unhelpful NHS, Department of Health and Government healthcare initiatives.

In 2014 Hammersmith & Fulham Council (H&FC), supported by Brent, Ealing and Hounslow Councils, set up the Independent Healthcare Commission (IHC) chaired by Michael Mansfield QC. Its brief was to examine whether or not SaHF was, is, or could be, fit for purpose. The commission’s final report was published in December 2015. The report documented evidence of SaHF failing to meet its healthcare, operational and financial goals.

At a public meeting in Hammersmith Town Hall on 23 February 2016 Stephen Cowan. Leader of H&FC announced to the 200 attendees how H&FC were pursuing the implementation of the main IHC recommendations:

+ He met with a Barrister QC during the week of Monday 15 February 2016 to investigate legal/ Judicial Review options with regards to halting SaHF.

+ He has written to the National Audit Office about the value for money aspects of  SaHF.

+ H&FC Scrutiny is pursuing SaHF and the Hammersmith Clinical Commissioning Group with regards to access to the final business cases for SaHF.

+ H&FC has sent every GP in Hammersmith and Fulham a copy of the 87 page IHC report.

Doctor and Nurse Vacancies Still Rising: 4,669 Doctors and 18,714 Nurses

The Office for National Statistics has revealed worrying increases in permanent staff vacancies in the NHS. For the period 2013 to 2015 the increase in the vacancy rate for doctors was almost 60%. For nurses it was 50%. Research by the BBC has revealed that 69% of all Trusts are seeking staff from overseas.

160 People Attend Ealing Save Our NHS Meeting in Ealing Town Hall on 2 February 2016

Tony O’Sullivan was our first speaker. He is Co-Chair of Keep Our NHS Public and a Paediatric  Consultant at Lewisham Hospital. He pointed out that the NHS NW London ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) plans said very little about children. With 400,000 children up to the age of 19 in NW London – and 86,000 of them in Ealing – this was disturbing. 50% of all critically ill children arrive at hospital A&Es in a parent’s arms and Ealing Hospital needs 24×7 coverage by Paediatric Consultants. He urged local activists to find out how many children are attending Ealing Hospital now; how long now parents have to wait for ambulances to ferry their sick children to the hospital; and how the integrated networks of care for children in Ealing will be built again should all children’s services at Ealing Hospital be curtailed in June 2016. He finished by asking just how constructive was it for Health Secretary Hunt and senior NHS executives to make virtually all 1.3 million NHS staff angry.

Next up was John Lister who is Director of London Health Emergency and was one of the commissioners on the Mansfield Healthcare Commission into SaHF. He has been campaigning for healthcare in London since 1983. He ripped into the unaccountability of CCGs. He highlighted some failed NHS outsourcing deals with private healthcare suppliers. He listed the impossible recent stream of demands from government on hospitals. If they don’t balance their books they will get no extra money. Demands on Mid Staffs to save £10 million led to it cutting corners and failing. SaHF was set up to save £1.5 million over five years. It’s now come to light that SaHF is demanding 1.3 billion in capital costs. But there is no money for this. We can’t go backwards but all we can look forward to is more closures but no new build as there is no money for this. There’s no evidence that even if out of hospital services could adequately replace acute care in hospital it would save any money. And there are no detailed plans or any implementations of these out of hospital services. The local population continues to grow but if Ealing and Charing Cross Hospitals cease to be Major Hospitals we’ll lose 700 to 800 hospital beds. Urgent Care Centres cannot replace A&Es. What we want are no more A&E closures and Maternity re-opened at Ealing Hospital. Rousing applause!!!

Dr Ajaob Sandhu spoke next. She is an 80 year old GP who has practised in Southall for 49 years. She bemoaned that humanitarian grounds had been ignored in the closures and closure plans. It is shortening life expectancy. The impending closure of children’s A&E will be disastrous for children especially ‘late presenters’ who are seriously ill.

Ealing Hospital Junior Doctor Ravi Ganepola was the final speaker. He cut through much of the misinformation about the Junior Doctors’ dispute. The bosses want to make remuneration for Saturday work the same as weekday work. The 5pm to 1am shift is to be remunerated as a day shift and not a night shift. Junior Doctors are being co-erced into working longer hours and they are worried that when tired they will make mistakes. The government’s linking of higher mortality rates to weekends is based on data for Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. The regulatory safeguards being proposed are inadequate.

Advertising Standards Authority Rules Against Brent CCG’s Misleading Posters on ‘A&E Only for Life-Threatening Emergencies’

In October 2015 Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) posters proclaiming ‘A&E for life–threatening emergencies only’ appeared across north west London. We pointed this out in our November 2015 newsletter and I saw such a poster on the Brentford to Southall 195 bus. We commented that this A&E statement was incorrect. If I broke my leg it would not be life threatening, but is the NHS really telling me not to go to a hospital A&E? Where should I go – perhaps to my GP or to a pharmacist?

Brent Patient Voice (BPV) asked its members what they thought of the posters. All of them who replied felt that the description of A&Es was incorrect. BPV (www.bpv.uk) tried several times to persuade Brent CCG (BCCG) to withdraw the posters but it refused. BPV wrote to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to complain about the posters.

On 3 February 2016 the ASA ruled against the BCCG and told them not to use the posters in their current form. ASA further told BCCG not to make misleading and potentially harmful claims about the scope of A&E services in the future. No doubt this ruling will apply to Ealing CCG and in fact to all CCGs.

BCCG has responded by telling the local press that its ad promoted patient safety. It has shied away from saying that it accepts the ASA adjudication and it has not apologised to Brent residents. Why is BCCG so tragically dysfunctional in this way?

“We need a local hospital, it is nothing too much to ask, I don’t think”
” I didn’t do anything to protest against the Maternity ward being closed down and I regret that because it is not good complaining about it afterwards”
“I think they are in the process of privatisating the NHS and I am really angry about it”

Ealing parents, children and residents explain why they are angry and are protesting against the planned closure of Ealing Hospital Children’s Ward. The interviews took place during Ealing Save our NHS march and rally on 12/03/2016.

Watch and share our video.

Ealing Save Our NHS, Ealing People from Ealing Save Our NHS on Vimeo.

Please enter your email address below if you want to receive regular news by email from Ealing Save our NHS campaign.

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Hundreds of local people marched through Ealing on Saturday to protest against plans to close the children’s ward at Ealing Hospital.
Health bosses want to close our children’s ward, and stop sick or injured children going to A&E.  If parents take them to A&E anyway, they will just be sent elsewhere.  The delay could be serious or fatal.  Local Parents are right to be really angry. Already they closed Maternity and it seems clear they are clearing the way to close the whole A&E at Ealing Hospital.

There was sunshine and music too. A large band of Ukulele players entertained the crowd as the demonstration assembled in Haven Green and a jazz band greeted the march at the destination, outside Perceval House, next to the Town Hall.

As the demonstration passed through Ealing Broadway centre, it was clapped and supported by local shoppers.  Local mother Mary Lynch, who spoke at the rally afterwards, said her children had need of Ealing Hospital several times and that it had saved her son’s life.

Other speakers included local GP and GLA member Onkar Sahota, Steve Pound MP, junior doctor and mother Helen Laycock and paediatric hospital consultant Tony O’Sullivan who dismissed suggestions that children would be better served by closure of the ward.

A few images from our well attended demo and rally.

Thanks to everyone attending or supporting us on social media.

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Issue: 33

February 2016

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.

NHS NW London’s ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) Payments to Management Consultants Since 2019/10 Now Exceed £71 Million

Colin Standfield of ‘Save Our Hospitals’ has assiduously submitted Freedom of Information requests in order to track NHS NW London’s SaHF payments to management consultants. Since 2009/10 to date the payments total £71, 640, 908.65. Almost half of this cash was paid to McKinsey and Company.

One might reasonably ask what measurable benefits have accrued from this massive outpouring of public funds? There has been no discernible improvements in A& E performance. We can all make our own minds up as to whether the closure of two hospital A&E units and the closure of a hospital maternity unit actually count as benefits.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council Write to Government to Immediately Halt the ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ Plan as Its Costs are Out of Control

Hammersmith & Fulham Council Leader Councillor Stephen Cowan has written to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP requesting a meeting to discuss ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF). SaHF was severely criticised by the 2015 Independent Healthcare Commission (IHC) report. The IHC highlighted that the 2012 cost estimate for SaHF of £112 million had ballooned in 2015 to £1.3 billion. SaHF prescribes that the majority of services at Charing Cross and Ealing Hospitals will be axed. Apparently Brent, Ealing, Harrow and Hounslow Councils have all joined with Hammersmith & Fulham in this initiative.

Private Healthcare News

Care UK

Care UK will soon no longer run Ealing Hospital’s Urgent Care Centre (UCC). Its current contract will not be renewed. Care UK announced publicly in 2015 that it had never made a profit out of running the UCC.

Circle Holdings

Its share price has dropped by 60% in the period 1 January 2016 to 26 January 2016. Incredibly the company says it has no idea why this disastrous share price drop has occurred.

BUPA

BUPA is trying to sell off its home care services. In 2013 BUPA wrote off £32.8 million of its value due to low public sector fees. In the half year to October 2015 BUPA lost £5.7 million on sales of £62.5 million.

IS THE GOVERNMENT TRYING TO DESTROY THE NHS NURSING SERVICE IN ENGLAND?

‘Bursaries Not Bombs’

This was the most powerful and succinct message on placards paraded in Westminster on Saturday 9 January 2016. I was one of thousands who marched in the wind and rain to support trainee nurses retaining Bursary payments. We marched along a circuitous route from St Thomas’ Hospital to Downing Street. Nurses, trainee nurses, junior doctors, consultants, midwives, trainee midwives and activist groups were all in evidence in the noisy demonstration.

Unlike other undergraduates, trainee nurses work many unpaid hours – nursing patients. Annual Bursaries (from £1,000 to £5,460) don’t offer real salaries but provide trainee nurses with a subsistence allowance. Currently nurses do not have to pay tuition fees.

The Government’s proposals are that nurses pay their own tuition fees which could be up to £9,000 per year and pay for their living costs.

Figures recently released by the Royal College of Nursing reveal a huge shortage of nurses. We have 10,000 nurse vacancies in London. The biggest vacancies are in the London North West Healthcare Trust (includes Ealing Hospital) where there were 811 vacancies in July 2015. This is 30% of the Trust’s nursing strength. West London Mental Health Trust (which services Ealing) had 242 nursing vacancies in July 2015 – which is 22% of its nursing work force.

The Government’s great idea is that Bursaries should be discontinued and English trainee nurses should take out loans. This way they would be truly nursing patients for nothing whist undergoing training. When qualified with an Associate degree after two years nurses will be in debt to the tune of £18,000 for tuition fees alone. Taking the more common educational path of a four year Batchelor’s degree in nursing the tuition debt will be £36,000. Given we have this massive shortage of nurses, how would these new arrangements encourage or incentivise anyone to enter nurse training? They wouldn’t and this is bonkers.

Blocking Overseas Nurses

Between April and November 2015, 2,341 requests by NHS hospitals to employ overseas nurse were turned down by the Government.

General Practice Nursing

Research just published by the Queens Nursing Institute has revealed that 33.4% of General Practice Nurses (GPNs) will retire by 2020. 43.1% did not feel their nursing team had the right number of appropriately qualified and trained staff. 23.1% had second jobs as well being GPNs.

IS THE GOVERNMENT TRYING TO DRIVE DOCTORS OUT OF THE NHS?

At 8:30am on Tuesday 12 January 2016 I stood on the Junior Doctors/BMA picket line outside Ealing Hospital. These brave young doctors seemed both nervous and confident about going on strike. Health bosses have tried to both frighten and patronise these people who work hard to soothe our pain and keep us alive. Claims like ‘they won’t help citizens if there is a terrorist attack’ and ‘they don’t understand what is on offer’ only serve to make them more determined.

On 13 January 2016, Secretary of State Hunt was caught on TV saying that the Government will force through the new doctors’ contract. He also parroted the familiar mantra of seven day working. On 18 January Prime Minister Cameron re-iterated that Junior Doctors could be forced unilaterally to accept these new contracts. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that if you are going to offer 24 hour full services every day the NHS will need more staff at all levels, more money to pay them and more beds. One wonders whether the Government has misjudged the mood of the country here. This isn’t like the miners’ strike. There’s clearly national support and sympathy for the junior doctors – I really do not think that was the case with the miners.

On 19 January the BMA suspended the 48 hour strike planned to start on 26 January. On 20 January a report suggested that Saturday working and safety were still major sticking points in the negotiations between the BMA, NHS Employers and the Department of Health (DoH). Those negotiations took place  on 21 and 22 January at ACAS, but no agreement was reached. On 21 January Junior Doctors and medical professors accused the DoH of ‘misusing statistics’ on weekend deaths. Apparently the DoH, Hunt and Cameron are quoting out of date data. The latter say that stroke patients are 20% more likely to die at weekends. The doctors and professors say that because of recent NHS improvements this is no longer the case. The Junior Doctors say that scaremongering by politicians is persuading patients to avoid being admitted to hospital at the weekend.

IS THE GOVERNMENT FORCING GPS TO QUIT?

Commonwealth Fund research has revealed that 29% of UK GPs plan to quit within five years. 20% of GPs became ill in 2015. 59% said they found their work stressful.

‘Pulse’ magazine has revealed that 31 GP practices closed and 41 branch surgeries closed in 2015. 200,000 patients were left without a GP as a result of these closures. This is a significant rise as closures in 2013 left 43,000 patients GP-less. Anecdotally there are many reasons why GP surgeries in England are closing. Here are some examples:

Running at a loss – Trentside Medical Group will not renew its contract to run Colwick Vale surgery in Nottingham because it can’t run the surgery at a profit.

CQC cancels registration – Oulton Medical Centre and Marine Parade surgery in East Anglia in October 2015. CQC claimed patients were at risk.

Building not fit for purpose – Wordsley Green Medical Practice’s surgery in Kingswinford in Dudley is to close because the local CCG says that the surgery building is not fit for purpose.

GP retiring – the only doctor at Wyken Medical Centre in Coventry is retiring so the surgery will close.

GP sickness – Bingfield Street surgery in Islington closed in 2015 as one of its doctors, who had been off sick for many months, did not return to work.

NHS dictat – In November 2015 NHS England announced the closure of Okement surgery in Okehampton, Devon. There was no public or patient consultation.

To Whom are GPs Accountable?

It’s all a bit confusing.

NHS England ‘commissions’ GPs. CQC can close down GP surgeries. GPs have to justify every hospital referral to their CCG. Some CCGs pay (bribe?) some GPs to do various things. In Ealing some GPs are paid by ECCG to provide mental health primary care. In Hammersmith & Fulham GPs apparently are rewarded by their CCG for not referring patients to hospitals.

Grandiosely Secretary of State Hunt says that GPs are accountable to their patients.

GPs met at a BMA Special Local Medical Committee (LMC) conference in London on 30 January 2016. The event was specifically convened to decide what actions are needed to ensure GPs can deliver a safe and sustainable service. It was decided that the General Practitioners Committee (GPC) should canvass GPs as to their willingness to submit undated resignations, unless negotiation with government for a rescue package for General Practice are concluded successfully within six months. GPs expressed their anger about CQC. They voted overwhelmingly ‘to explore all options by which GP practices could lawfully withdraw from engaging with CQC’.

THE GOVERNMENT IS PUTTING PHARMACIES OUT OF BUSINESS

As of October 2016 up to a quarter of pharmacies in England will have been forced out of business by the Government. Annual fees paid to high street pharmacies will be cut by £170 million. Apparently the reason for this is a spatial planning one. The Government reckons there are too many pharmacies on our high streets.  

‘Redundant NHS Staff Rehired in £92 Million Farce’

This was the front page headline in the 11 January 2016 issue of ‘The Times’. According to data revealed in replies to Labour Party Parliamentary questions, 2,641 NHS staff were  laid off and rehired in the three years from April 2012. The average redundancy payment was £36,000 although some senior staff received over £300,000. Probably the star performer in this remuneration scandal was Karen Straughair who was paid £605,000 when NHS South of Tyne and Wear was wound up in June 2014. She then got a job as Recovery Director at Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust.

The tragedy of all this is that this massive financial ‘leakage’ was and is legal. Why can’t legislation be enacted which demands that if you are made redundant by company x and then rehired by company x you have to pay back the redundancy cash?

In September 2013 we reported in our newsletter that the NHS had spent £1.4 billion on redundancy payments since 2010.

You can watch now the videos of the three main speakers at our Public Meeting on the 2nd February in Ealing Town Hall.

Following below two of the most passionate and emotional contributions from the audience.

Tony O’Sullivan, Consultant Paediatrician, talks about the impact on children’s care

John Lister, health campaigner and consultant on plans to reduce services

Dr Ajaib Sandhu on her experience in the Ealing NHS area

Doctor Gurjinder Sandhu; the attacks on his place of work, Ealing Hospital

Samantha Schmidt, carer and mother on the importance of children’s services

The Shaping a Healthier Future (SaHF) plan was to close 4 A&Es across NW London. In Sept 2014 it closed the first two: at Hammersmith and Central Middlesex Hospitals. You don’t have to be a medical statistician to see from the graphs the significant dive in A&E performance in our area following the closure of these two A&Es . Our area is the blue line labelled Eal and NWLT. The target is the horizontal straight line of 95% of Type 1 A&E patients being seen within 4 hours.

Many of us believe that figures like this show SaHF’s plan to be completely flawed. Even an injection of £20 million to prop up poor performance at Northwick Park failed to prevent this decline.

Ealing’s Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and the SaHF team would not offer an explanation for this awful performance. They commissioned a £150,000 Mc Kinsey & Co report to explain the drop in performance. This report reached the conclusion that the A&E performance drop was due to “sector changes” no doubt those same changes they had proposed in the original SaHF document.

Brent CCG tried to fend off the problems of very busy A&Es by telling residents of Brent Harrow and Hillingdon that “A&Es were for life threatening emergencies only”. The Advertising Standards Authority banned the advice and poster following a complaint.

The unpleasant truth is that if we could measure maternity closure  (July 2015) and proposed closure of childrens’ services (June 2016) at Ealing Hospital we would find and would expect similar drops in performance. This is not only unacceptable to Ealing residents, it puts pressure on neighbouring provision throughout west London and beyond.

Supporters of SaHF like to evidence the significant improvements to outcomes for stroke patients using centralised services. Now even these gains are being put in jeopardy by reduced ambulance performance.

In conclusion the authoritative Mansfield Report recommends that:

1. The A&E department at Central Middlesex be reopened to take pressure off the faltering Northwick Park A&E and
2. That Ealing and Charing Cross Hospitals A&Es must retain blue light ambulance services for the foreseeable future. 

[pdf-embedder url=”https://ealingsaveournhs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Copy-of-AE-Data-to-Nov-2015-Type-1-and-All-1.pdf”]

 (Data and graphs were collated by Colin Stansfield)

160 People Attend Ealing Save Our NHS Meeting in Ealing Town Hall on 2 February 2016

Tony O’Sullivan was our first speaker. He is Co-Chair of Keep Our NHS Public and a Paediatric  Consultant at Lewisham Hospital. He pointed out that the NHS NW London ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) plans said very little about children. With 400,000 children up to the age of 19 in NW London – and 86,000 of them in Ealing – this was disturbing. 50% of all critically ill children arrive at hospital A&Es in a parent’s arms and Ealing Hospital needs 24×7 coverage by Paediatric Consultants. He urged local activists to find out how many children are attending Ealing Hospital now; how long now parents have to wait for ambulances to ferry their sick children to the hospital; and how the integrated networks of care for children in Ealing will be built again should all children’s services at Ealing Hospital be curtailed in June 2016. He finished by asking just how constructive was it for Health Secretary Hunt and senior NHS executives to make virtually all 1.3 million NHS staff angry.

Next up was John Lister who is Director of London Health Emergency and was one of the commissioners on the Mansfield Healthcare Commission into SaHF. He has been campaigning for healthcare in London since 1983. He ripped into the unaccountability of CCGs. He highlighted some failed NHS outsourcing deals with private healthcare suppliers. He listed the impossible recent stream of demands from government on hospitals. If they don’t balance their books they will get no extra money. Demands on Mid Staffs to save £10 million led to it cutting corners and failing. SaHF was conceived in 2012 to save £1.5 million over five years. It’s now come to light that SaHF is demanding 1.3 billion in capital costs. But there is no money for this. And there still aren’t any final business cases for any of the SaHF initiatives. We can’t go backwards but all we can look forward to is more closures but no new build as there is no money for this. There’s no evidence that even if out of hospital services could adequately replace acute care in hospitals it would save any money. And there are no detailed plans or any implementations of these out of hospital services. The local population continues to grow but if Ealing and Charing Cross Hospitals cease to be Major Hospitals we’ll lose 700 to 800 hospital beds. Urgent Care Centres cannot replace A&Es. What we want are no more A&E closures and Maternity re-opened at Ealing Hospital. Rousing applause!!!

Dr Ajaib Sandhu spoke next. She is an 80 year old GP who has practiced in Southall for 49 years. She bemoaned that humanitarian grounds had been ignored in the closures and closure plans. It is shortening life expectancy. The impending closure of children’s A&E will be disastrous for children especially ‘late presenters’ who are seriously ill.

Ealing Hospital Junior Doctor Ravi Ganepola was the final speaker. He cut through much of the misinformation about the Junior Doctors’ dispute. The bosses want to make remuneration for Saturday work the same as weekday work. The 5pm to 1am shift is to be remunerated as a day shift and not a night shift. Junior Doctors are being co-erced into working longer hours and they are worried that when tired they will make mistakes. The government’s  linking of higher mortality rates to weekends is based on data for Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. The regulatory safeguards being proposed are inadequate.

You can watch more videos of the speeches here

People speaking at the public meeting from Ealing Save Our NHS on Vimeo.

CLIPS from Ealing Save Our NHS on Vimeo.

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NHS NW London’s ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) Payments to Management Consultants Since 2009/10 Now Exceed £71 Million

Colin Standfield of ‘Save Our Hospitals’ has assiduously submitted Freedom of Information requests in order to track NHS NW London’s SaHF payments to management consultants. Since 2009/10 to date the payments total £71,640, 908.65. Almost half of this cash has been paid to McKinsey and Company.
One might reasonably ask what measurable benefits have accrued from this massive outpouring of public funds? There has been no discernible improvement in A&E performance. We can all make our own minds up as to whether the closure of two hospital A&E units and the closure of a hospital maternity unit actually count as benefits.