Tag Archives: nhs

Haringey residents face long waits for treatment

Posted on by

This week’s Journal runs the story:

Cancer drugs wait: Haringey in UK’s bottom four

CANCER sufferers in Haringey face one of the longest fights in the country for drugs to treat their illness.

Patients have to wait up to three months for a decision on appeals for certain types of medication, putting the Haringey Teaching Primary Care Trust (PCT) in the bottom four of England’s 152 trusts.

It relates to waiting times for appeals for drugs that are either judged too expensive or have not been assessed by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.

The survey by charity Macmillan Cancer Support has led to renewed demands for action by Hornsey and Wood Green MP Lynne Featherstone.

She said: “Three months is not acceptable about decisions that mean the difference between life and death.”

Joyce Vincent film being made

Posted on by

Catching up on a couple of things from earlier in the week – to Wapping on Thursday to be interviewed for a film. No – sadly not becoming a movie start! Carol Morley, a film-maker, interviewed me about the tragic death of Joyce Vincent who was found dead in her flat in Sky City (above Wood Green shopping city) and who had been dead for about two years. There were half-wrapped Christmas presents on the floor, the TV was on and the window was open with a billowing curtain.

We all said ‘how tragic’, how could it happen, where were the neighbours, where was her family, what about utilities, what about Housing Association rent arrears and so on and so on. She had been at one time a victim of domestic violence – but that was past. In the end there was no foul play – but the haunting nature of the case made me pursue various strands for some months – long after the media circus had left town.

Well – Carol came to interview me then – and now she has found the funding and is making a movie about Joyce. She has found out more than the journalists, more than the police, more than anyone – and I’m not going to say here what she found – but it will make a riveting film and it will be a tribute to this woman who we all felt so bad about and about whom virtually nothing was known.

Then it was to the Whittington Hospital for a flu jab. I always have the jab (am asthmatic) but usually at my doctor’s surgery – but to publicise the need for people who are older, have diabetes or asthma – want to raise the profile. No doubt very special treatment as the Head of Nursing gives me the jab. Thanks Camilla!

Then visited the newly doubled in size and refurbished wards for extremely premature babies. They were so tiny – it’s unbelievable how the babies survive. It’s not just the equipment – but also the completely dedicated and committed team of nurses and consultants who work round the clock to protect and nurture these tiny lives.

Haringey cancer sufferers face longest drug decision waits

Posted on by

Bad news this week:

News that Haringey cancer sufferers are waiting up to three months for appeals for medication has led to renewed demands for action by local Liberal Democrats. The revelation, unearthed in a recent survey by Macmillan Cancer Support, puts Haringey in the bottom four of 152 Trusts in England, with patients having to wait up to three months when appealing for the right to drugs that either haven’t been assessed by NICE, or deemed too expensive.

Read the full story on my website.

Health Trust standards fall

Posted on by

Haringey Primary Care Trust is letting residents down. Its official rating for quality of service has fallen from ‘good’ to ‘fair’ – which is bad enough – but even worse its performance in meeting national targets has fallen to ‘weak’.

Front line services particularly highlighted by the official watchdog – the Healthcare Commission – are breast cancer screening and access to GP services.

My Liberal Democrat colleague Cllr Richard Wilson and I have demanded an urgent meeting with the Trust’s leaders to seek assurance over an action plan for improvement – and I have contacted Health Secretary Alan Johnson to ask for assurances that resources will be levered in so that no local people suffer the consequences of Haringey PCTs poor performance.

Taking care of our feet

Posted on by

This summer recess I am trying to visit all the sheltered housing and homes for the elderly in my Hornsey & Wood Green constituency. It looks like the visits will spill over into the autumn, but the reason for making such a concentrated set of visits is that I want to reach out to people who often find it hard to come and see me in person to raise their concerns – and to hear at first hand what the issues are that matter the most in their day-to-day lives.

One issue coming up time and time again is foot care. It’s an issue that barely gets a mention in my normal post bag or in the media (even though NHS stories are not exactly rare) – but when getting out and talking to people, it’s clear there’s a massive issue here for so many people, as you can read about in my latest newspaper column.

Topping out ceremony for our new community health centre

Posted on by

Hornsey Hospital topping out ceremonyTuesday was a celebration day – for the new community health centre on the site of the old Hornsey Central Hospital as was. I was in attendance to lay the topping out stone. It’s a tradition in the building industry when the building reaches the top floor. There are now only about nine months to go before actual completion and handover.

Yes – there has been lots of controversy about the new community health centre – but my own view is that given the undertaking that there will be no reduction in number of GPs in the borough, everyone will be able to keep their own family doctor and that there would be no more than a ‘reasonable’ walk to them – then what we will gain in terms of better health facilities in Hornsey & Wood Green is to be celebrated.

Anyway – here’s the little speech I made – which will give you my full views:

I am absolutely delighted to be here today to celebrate the Topping Out of our new Neighbourhood Health Center – the Hornsey Central Hospital – as was.

This is an unbelievable day to have dawned!

Having campaigned with local people – originally against its closure – and then through all its incarnations on its way to today’s ceremony – it’s been a long road.

I have always believed that the west of Haringey borough, Hornsey & Wood Green, has tremendous need for additional and better health facilities to be provided for the local community.

I am sure members of our local health trust will agree that the people of Hornsey & Wood Green are a demanding bunch – and rightly so. In one way we are a highly articulate group of people who will give any public authority a run for their money in making sure we are heard.

And in another way we also are a group with a very great demand for health care because of high levels of poverty and deprivation.

I have high aspirations that this new medical facility will contribute significantly to improve the health outcomes for both these groups. This is why have campaigned so hard for so long to help make this happen.

I want to put on record my thanks to Richard Sumray, Chair of the Trust, who long ago at one of my many meetings haranguing him over the years to deliver on a replacement health facility for the old Hospital, promised me that he saw the same need in the west of the Borough that I saw.

And that he was committed to fighting to get the funding to deliver such a facility – no easy task. And he has delivered on that promise.

I have no doubt there will be battles ahead.

Transport for London has still yet to deliver on its verbal commitment to me to improve transport links for the new hospital – absolutely vital.

We also cannot ignore the fears of some in our community that this shiny new hospital will diminish the primary healthcare that local residents have known for generations with an end to a GP who knows your name and your personal medical history.

In my discussions – the Trust has made it clear that this will not be the case – and that there will be no overall reduction in the number of GPs in the borough; that we will be able to retain our own family GP and that we will have a reasonable walk to that GP.

I therefore urge the Trust to continue the work to engage with local people – listen to their concerns and to act to allay their fears.

This will be a community facility so it is vitally important that the community have a full say each step of the way.

There still remain plenty of i’s to dot and t’s to cross, but I hope everyone here today will join me in celebrating what we hope will be a new dawn in the provision of health facilities in Haringey.

Haringey's health services

Posted on by

Surgery, then met new Head at Hornsey Girl’s School (what a great new head!), then had my usual meeting with David Sloman (CEO of Whittington Hospital – who assures me that my endless banging of the drum on how patients are treated in terms of care and compassion is now top of the list) and then on to Haringey’s new Sixth Form Centre to present a prize to one of the Haringey Heroes. This is an awards event for young people across Haringey who have showed exceptional talent, or caring, or leadership in their lives. For example – one was a carer’s award for children who have (on top of everything) to care for parents with disabilities. It is one of Haringey’s better efforts – and I was very happy to be there.

Thinking further about local health services – and watching Lord Darzi talk about the NHS plan – I am struck by the contrast between what he says – which is that polyclinics are about providing extra services – and what people are most worried about locally – which is that their doctor will be plucked from their current location and put in this amorphous ‘polyclinic’ further away.

It is still unclear to me – for example – whether our new local health facility (I doubt whether it will carry on being called a polyclinic) currently rising from a building site – will be only ‘additional’ as Darzi (and ministers) claim. When building is already taking place and this is still unclear, matters are far from as clear as they should be.

It is also still unclear what services will be provided on site and what say we the people actually will have. I have no doubt that the west of Haringey needs a new health facility and it is pretty difficult to get any money spent on us – as we are always in direct comparison to Tottenham where the need is obviously greater as an area of high deprivation and unemployment. However, there is plenty of need and unemployment this side too – and quite frankly – we all need and are entitled to proper health provision.

Visiting St Ann's

Posted on by

Go to St Ann’s Hospital to celebrate its Lordship Ward becoming the 300th ward of the national ‘Star Wards’ project. David Lammy (MP for Tottenham) is on the visit too.

We start by meeting Marion Janner. Marion is a service user from Haringey and is a vocal campaigner and mover on the Star Wards project. This is a national project started to begin to address one of the great challenges of mental health care – that on an inpatient ward the boredom is enough to drive you to madness. It is totally counterproductive to a therapeutic outcome – and so Star Wards begins to address some of those challenges.

St Ann’s is only at the beginning of its program to generate and implement Star Wards – but judging by the enthusiasm of both staff and patients that I met this will deliver real improvement. I also visited the ‘healthy living’ part of the equation and met patient and trainer in the gym.

St Ann’s has had a difficult recent history in terms of administration at higher echelons – but as they move towards their application for ‘foundation status’ with their new Chair, Michael Fox (who I met later in the day at Parliament – coincidentally) they have hopefully moved onward and upward. And there certainly was a very positive attitude around the wards and the patients and the potential.

Two notes of discord did surface. The first was a desperate plea for me to tell the Government that they don’t want, and can’t cope with, endless new initiatives. They feel that they are barely given time to get a new directive in place and begin to embed it – before it is changed and the next headline initiative rolls in – and it’s all change, thereby never reaching a point of proper implementation and smooth running.

The second was about the service provided by the crisis centre – which deals with emergencies. The problems ranged from being answered by an answerphone (not great if you are suicidal) to being told to ‘pull yourself together’.

As I said, later in the day, I met with the new Chair of the Mental Health Trust who seems very determined to turn St Ann’s into a modern and exemplar service deliverer. There will be a need to sell around half the site to fund the new building etc. My criteria – as I told him – was about what would be provided post development, how real and thorough the consultation would be (we are sick of faux consultations) and so on. St Ann’s is not a great layout for a hospital – but it is friendly and human scale. So – we will see how all this develops over the next period.

Polyclinics: panacea or plague?

Posted on by

Polyclinics are turning out to be one of those slow-burning political issues which, although getting the occasional piece of news coverage, have really been bubbling away in the public’s mind and concerns for a long time before really grabbing the forefront of political attention.

The possible introduction of polyclinics has been an issue in Haringey for some time now, and it’s a topic I’ve blogged about moderately regularly – but nearly each time I’ve been struck when going to research further information on the topic or to see what other people have been saying, how little attention overall the issue has been getting. Yes, there’s been the occasional news story and occasional reference in Parliament, but for an issue that could massively alter the way tens of millions of people get their health care via the NHS, it’s really been pretty low key.

The recent news that over 1 million people have signed a petition on the issue – along with the major Kings Fund report into the topic – may well change that now!

I certainly hope so, because the introduction of Polyclinics, or Neighbourhood Health Centres, or whatever the government has tried to re-brand them as this week is the biggest health issue facing my constituency – and many others – at the moment.

The idea behind these centres has some attractions – bring different health services together on one site so that you can move quickly and easily between those services without the usual delays (go to one place, get referred to another, wait for appointment) or the extra travel.

Haringey’s Primary Care Trust has chosen to be a trail blazer for Polyclinics and has enthusiastically adopted the idea. The current proposal is to close a number of local GP’s surgeries and consolidate them into four or five Polyclinics.

And that’s where the concerns start. Will these become large impersonal services where we are no longer able to see our own local doctor? We need guarantees that the relationship with your doctor will continue. Any severing the doctor/patient relationship would be a travesty. Hardly anyone wants to explain a deeply personal medical problem to a complete stranger.

Consolidation of GP’s will undoubtedly increase journey times for many people wishing to see their GP, and force them to take either public transport or their car. The heaviest users of primary care have low levels of car ownership (senior citizens 69% no car; lone parents 42%).

It’s easy for those of us who have no trouble getting around to under-estimate just what a burden it can be to extend someone’s 10 minute journey into a 30 minute with two bus changes journey.

The site of the old Hornsey Hospital is where one of the proposed polyclinics is to be built. This site is currently served by only one bus route and it takes Transport for London anything from two years to establish a bus route. This means that those with the most need would most likely have the least access to the service. I met with TfL and raised the issue of public transport provision to this site several years ago and recently raised it with Peter Hendy – the Transport Commissioner for London. But as yet – no firm plans.

Sorting out adequate access to the services should be central to any polyclinics plan – not an afterthought to play around with after the service is in place and people are already suffering from poor transport links.

The recent report by the Kings Fund concluded that there were “serious risks to access to care” posed by consolidation of primary health care and that “it is unlikely that the gains in access to some services currently provided in hospitals are worth the losses for primary care patients.”
Accessibility of service, both in terms of getting an appointment and getting to the appointment, is vital – especially as 90% of access to the NHS is via the primary care route.

And then there is the question of whether polyclinics will really add to our services and facilities? Or will consolidation mean – as it has in so many other areas – cuts?

That brings me to the problems over how the policy is being pushed through – without proper consultation or information. It’s a central imposition of Labour’s ideas on to local communities. Local health bodies have been instructed by central government that they must have polyclinics in every community. This is a classic top-down, Whitehall imposed centralising solution to local problems.

As with our post offices, we were promised that local opinion would be taken account of through consultation. Yet so far we have not been told precisely which services will be provided by polyclinics. This renders the consultation process pretty meaningless as we cannot make an informed choice about what we will gain. And so we are marching on blind – not knowing and having to keep our fingers crossed.

New dentist practice in Haringey

Posted on by

Lynne Featherstone and some dentistry equipment!Yesterday saw the opening of a new dental practice – Crystal Dentist Practice – in Durnsford Road. Hurrah! We need more dentists – and yes – it took them two years but they managed to get funding for some NHS work as well as private.

Having consulted with local residents – they realised that there was a huge demand for an NHS dentist locally and decided that they would wait to get the NHS contract and not just go ahead as a private dentist. So – well done!

Dr Ali sat bravely in the very state of the art chair – while I grabbed an instrument! I’m not really a dentist – bet you couldn’t tell.

I’m a great believer in the importance of good design – and the pleasant atmosphere that flows from it. The whole surgery is absolutely beautifully designed with state of the art equipment. So – double well done!