Tag Archives: whittington hospital

In the public interest! Whittington continued……….

Posted on by

So – on Monday the draft ‘options’ for the future configuration of our local health services were passed up the chain to the Strategic Health Authority for London – NHS London. Well – that is the news that reaches me. No – we are not to know their thinking.

My understanding is that these are the first cut of reconfiguration options that NCL (North Central London Sector) have sent to SHA (Strategic Health Authority.

I feel we should have access to this document as soon as possible and I have sent an email to Rachel Tyndall (Chair of NCL) asking for a copy. Just in case this request is refused – I will submit a Freedom of Information request on Monday.

On the democratic accountability around all of this – why is it that local authorities have no representation at the decision making tables? It turns out we do – an officer form Enfield has been nominated to NCL. It is outrageous that a paid officer has been made the effective “place man” to represent  the 1.2 million people in the NCL area.

It seems that this was agreed following meetings between NCL and Leaders and CEOs of the boroughs – sold down the swanny in my view. My LibDem colleague, Dave Winskill’s suggestion is, at the very least, all lead members on adult services get together to discuss this and the implications for their services and demand representation.

After all, I have no doubt that any savings that these savage cuts make (if they succeed in their evil passage) will not be shared with the Boroughs who will surely bear some of the extra cost of community based care?

Whittington A+E campaign update – this is about peoples' lives – not pawns on a management piece of paper

Posted on by

Decisions are being made right now behind closed doors about the future of health services at the Whittington, including the Accident & Emergency service.

Although there will be a public consultation later this year (after the elections are safely out of the way!), what is being decided now is what options will be on offer in that consultation. So unless we fight now to get the options we want included, it will all be too late by the autumn.

That is why I am going to meet with Rachel Tyndall, (Chair of the London North Central Review Panel) – and want to make sure she knows just how important the Whittington A&E services are to so very many people.

Very importantly, the petition will show numbers and weight of public opinion – but there is nothing like personal stories to make the case.

So – to do this I need some more help from you. What I need is one paragraph with your own personal story of when you or someone you know had to go to the Whittington A&E and what that meant to you and so on. This is about peoples’ lives – not about pawns on a piece of management paper.

If you’re lucky, you and the people you know won’t have had to use the A&E yourselves – but please do also pass this request on to others that you know.

I will then collate the stories and present them not only to Ms Tyndall but to all the Board Members of the various bodies who will have a hand in deciding what options come forward next autumn for public consultation. (So please leave out any very personal details which you don’t want other people to read.)

Thank you so much for your support in this battle.

(Also on YouTube here.)

Whittington A&E new news!

Posted on by

Word reaches me from the Council of Governors’ of the Whittington who met on 13 January (not from a Governor – just before anyone begins a witch hunt).

According to the record of the meeting  – North Central London NHS (the sector we belong to) and the Whittington have now ruled out the Whittington A&E being reduced in hours to 16 per day. In black and white it says: “This leaves options where either the full A&E is retained or there will be no A&E at all. The Whittington might then have an Urgent Care Centre.”

Reading the words in italic above from the record of the Governors’ meeting – why is it I feel that the North London Central NHS will be pushing for the Urgent Care Centre.

If that is such a brilliant solution – let them have the courage of their convictions and put both options to us – the people!

Well – the public consultation is in the Autumn or later – and I am sure we local people all want the option that retains a 24/7 A&E at the Whittington to be in that consultation – and we want that consultation to be for those who use the Whittington. They are the ones who need to be heard in this debate – local people, the patients and the relatives – not the rest of the sector, not the managers, not the CEOs or Medical Directors – but us!

Our challenge is to make sure that option comes forward and that consultation actually means that we have a choice and that the outcome of the consultation reflects our views.

Whittington A&E update

Posted on by

Here’s my latest column for the Ham & High:

In the twelve years I have been a local politician, other than in the cases of Victoria Climbie and Baby P, I have not seen such a tidal wave of outrage as erupted when the news of the threat to the Whittington Hospital’s A&E was revealed.

The rate of sign up to the petition I launched to object to closure or reduction to the Whittington A&E service, outstripped by some distance, all of the petitions I have launched over that 12 years. (I will be presenting the petition in the next week or two so if you have not yet signed it online or on paper, please do so at http://bit.ly/whittington – and encourage others too).

Originally the person in charge of the NHS’s North London Sector sent out a letter to the Chief Executive Officers and the Medical Directors of all the hospitals involved about the options for future arrangements for A&E – all of which stated quite clearly that there would be no emergency take at the Whittington.

In the face of the public anger, the NHS has backed off, saying that ‘no decisions’ had yet been taken and that a range of options are being considered to delivery ‘better health services’ for local people. These new ‘options’ would be consulted on with local people next September – general and local elections safely out of the way!

That timing makes me suspicious – and all the more so after seeing a new document put out by North Central London NHS dated January 2010 and titled ‘Frequently Asked Questions’. Reading between the lines of the repeated emphasis given to how emergency cases can be handled via NHS Direct, local pharmacies and GPs, plus the reference to the most appropriate care not necessarily being the nearest, the document reads like a carefully worded preparation to cutting back on A&E after all – dressed up in warm words about other services.

Also lacking from the document is an appreciation of the human dimension of A&E and health care more generally. The judgements about what the “best” ways are of providing care should not just be technocratic accounting exercises in measuring ambulance journey times and counting the pennies.

They must also be about the ease – or not – for patients, their relatives and their friends in accessing the service and visiting someone taken in to hospital. High quality professional treatment is vital – and so too is the support of friends and family which helps recovery immensely. Distant services curtail that support and make for worse health care as a result.

So – at the moment we have something of a stand-off. The NHS has damaged its reputation by failing to be clear and open from day one but – for the moment – we have forestalled any damaged to our health services.

We need to keep up the pressure on both our local Haringey Primary Care Trust (PCT) and North Central London NHS – so their minds are focused on what local people want and not just what the powers that be say we should have.

Whittington A&E – not me mate!

Posted on by

So – I table a series of written questions in Parliament on thefuture of  the Whittington and the decisions around it:

Lynne Featherstone: (Hornsey & Wood Green)

‘To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether all of the proposals made to the North Central London Service and Organisation Review include the Whittington Hopsital, have a (a) 24 hour accident and emergency unit and (b) full intensive care unit,; and if he will make a statement.

Phil Hope (Minster answering for the Government)

This is a matter for the local National Health Service

 

Lynne Featherstone: (Hornsey & Wood Green)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what targets have been set in relation to the savings to be made as a consequence of the North Central London Service and Organisational Review; and if he will make a statement

 

Phil Hope (Minister answering for the Government)

This is a matter for the local National Health Service

 

Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey & Wood Green)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what timetable has been set for the public consultation on the North Central London Service and Organisational Review; and if he will make a statement.

Phil Hope (minster answering for the Government

This is a matter for the local National Health Service

So – I’m seeing a bit of a pattern here!

The only time you can get any traction on any of this with any formal accountability – is when the proposals come forward the local scrutiny committee at the Council refers the decision to the Secretary of State. A bit late on in the process doncha think?

So – it is down to we the people – to scare them off!

We will see in January where the ‘local National Health Sevice thinking is going. Hopefully the size of the petitions and local peoples’ anger will make them see sense – otherwise it’s revolution!

The Whittington – on the sick list?

Posted on by

Whittington Hospital protestHere’s my latest Ham & High column:

The world works in mysterious ways. If I hadn’t broken a bone in my foot a couple of weeks ago – I might not have heard what was being planned for the future of the Whittington in such a timely fashion.

The position put out by Rachel Tyndall (CEO for North London Central NHS) in a letter to senior NHS managers was that the Whittington would lose its Accident & Emergency services.

But after the letter was publicised, the situation abruptly changed. A revised letter was sent out in which options for the future of the Whittington designate it a ‘local hospital’. That is a very comforting sounding phrase – but it would still mean an end to 24 hour A&E cover.

The rapidity with which the original proposals to end all A&E were dropped does make me doubt how well thought out they were – and also whether they have really been abandoned fully or are still lurking waiting for a chance to come back.

So I have sent out emails and letters to inform local people what was going on, with the background on the threats to close or reduce the A&E services at the Whittington Hospital. You can sign the petition yourself at http://campaigns.libdems.org.uk/saveouraande

The responses are pouring in at a volume I have actually never seen before, with over 1,000 signatures in the first 48 hours. It is already quite clear that local people don’t want to lose their local A&E nor see it reduced – nor do they feel the NHS has been  communicating well or fully on the subject.

In the background to all this are talks about merging Royal Free and The Whittington – either completely or some of the services. The principle of raising the quality of health services by providing them via the best means available is a good one – and it may be that some services are best provided through only one or the other of these two hospitals. But A&E is one of the services that needs to be local and 24 hours – that’s the point.

As one constituent wrote to me, who works elsewhere in the NHS themselves, said of the Whittington, it “exists to provide a local and emergency service and is at risk of having its lifeblood sucked away”.

I have held meetings in the last week with the key people at both the London North Central Review Panel and the Whittington. Whilst all the NHS senior people are saying no decisions have been made, that original letter with its set of proposals – all of which meant closing the Whittington’s A&E – make it clear which way thoughts are running on the issue.

Although there are promises to bring the issue to public consultation, consultation has to be over a meaningful range of options – not a set that already assumes a key decision. With the consultation pencilled in for September 2010 – after the next elections please note – there is a whiff in the air of putting controversial decisions off until after the votes with the ability to then push them through with the public voice neutered.

That is why it is so important that local peoples’ views are heard loud and clear NOW. Otherwise when the Health Authority ‘options’ finally come to public consultation – we may find that there are no options that keep the Whittington A&E open.

Adjournment Debate on Whittington A & E

Posted on by

Jeremy Corbyn – MP for Islington North – managed to get an adjournment debate last night on the future of the Whittington – and he very kindly let me speak. For him and I, the most affected constituencies, we are joining forces to ensure that NHS health bosses get the message loud and clear BEFORE decisions are made – that local people are madder than hell at even the suggestion of closure or reduction.

Interestingly, and I will look at Hansard later today, the Minister seemed pretty ticked off with the North London sector and the PCTs and the way they have gone about this. So – hopefully – between an ear-wigging from the minister and the wrath of the local people and MPs we will frighten them off.

They now speak in whispers about how nothing is decided and they are just looking at options. Don’t be fooled – it is quite clear to me that was an option they were considering and without a public rumpus – they would have continued sweetly on that path!

Whittington – it just gets worse………..

Posted on by

Rumours are emerging that the planned merger of the Whittington and Royal Free Hospitals will not be enough to satisfy NHS bosses and that there may instead be a forced marriage between the Whittington, Royal Free and UCLH Hospitals.

This raises interesting questions, because UCLH is a Foundation Trust. I believe this may mean that the proposed ‘merger’ will be nothing of the sort, but will instead be a take-over by UCLH of the other two hospitals – a wonderful Xmas present for UCLH, which has been dreaming of this for years…. This disaster just goes on and on….”

Meanwhile, lots of denials by NHS bosses about intentions to close or reduce A&E departments at the Whittington and North Mid.

Having now been in elected politics for over ten years – one thing I am sure of – when there are budget cuts demanded and letters showing closure sent out and then denied – is that the sooner and the louder that local people let their views be known the better!

Otherwise – heaven forfend – we could find that none of the options that come to public consultation next September contain anything that bears any relationship to what local people actually want!

The Whittington – who is making the decisions?

Posted on by

I think the Government speaks with forked tongue!

Here is the parliamentary question that I put down for written answer last week – and the answer itself.

Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey & Wood Green, Liberal Democrat)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether all of the proposals made to the North Central London Service and Organisation Review include the Whittington Hospital, Islington, having a (a) 24 hour accident and emergency unit and (b) full intensive care unit; and if he will make a statement.

Phil Hope (Minister of State (the East Midlands), Regional Affairs; Corby, Labour)

This is a matter for the local national health service.

So why, if this is a local matter for the local national health service, have both the CEO of the Whittington, Rob Larkman and Rachel Tyndall (in charge of London North Central Strategic Health Authority), been summoned to see the Secretary of State for Health early next week?

Over a thousand residents sign local MP's save A&E petition in 48 hours

Posted on by

Local residents’ outrage at plans to close the Accident and Emergency (A&E) services at the Whittington and the North Middlesex hospitals has today been made clear after Liberal Democrat petitions against cuts got over a thousand signatures in the first 48 days.

Hornsey and Wood Green MP Lynne Featherstone and Health Spokesperson Cllr Nigel Scott launched the petitions on the 23rd November, after a leaked letter from Islington NHS boss Rachel Tyndall showed that there were plans to possibly close the A&E department at both the Whittington and the North Middlesex Hospital.

Local residents who want to sign the Whittington petition should go to http://bit.ly/SaveOurAandE and residents who want to sign the North MIddlesex petition should go to http://bit.ly/northmid.

Lynne Featherstone MP comments:

“It’s overwhelming and really powerful to see the petition signatures pouring in. It’s clear that local people will not accept cuts or closures of emergency services at our closest hospitals- and neither will I!

“This sends a message loud and clear and I will make sure that local health bosses have no illusions to the contrary when I present the petition – hands off our A&E!”

Cllr Nigel Scott adds:

“Residents need to have a real say when it comes to the future of their nearest emergency service.

“It can literally be a question of life and death and that’s why it’s so important that local residents show how they feel about this now. Please take a minute to sign the petition – it will really make a difference.”