10:50pm Thursday 18th March 2010
By James Connell
HEALTH campaigners protested against a “rushed” shake-up of the local health service before a crunch meeting to decide the future of the NHS in Worcestershire.
A prospective MP and local councillors displayed placards with ‘Stop the Rush’ and ‘Hands off our Local Hospitals’ outside County Hall in Worcester before a meeting of NHS Worcestershire.
Harriett Baldwin, Conservative parliamentary candidate for West Worcestershire, and councillors including Pat Merrick, former chairman of the League of Friends of Malvern Community Hospital, lobbied bosses at NHS Worcestershire over plans to change the management of the health service.
NHS Worcestershire has been told by the Department of Health to restructure so the organisation pays for services only rather than providing them directly.
Government wants health chiefs to decide how they overhaul the service by Wednesday, March 31, with the changes scheduled to be brought in next April.
Critics say the move is rushed and without enough public consultation although health chiefs say they will talk through the plans in more detail after the general election.
The preferred option, ratified by the board on Wednesday, was for NHS Worcestershire to give up control of the community hospitals and dissolve the Worcestershire NHS Partnership Trust, transferring control of its £90 million provider arm, which employs about 2,000 staff, to a new organisation which would be formed to run community hospitals and mental health services.
The breast screening service and certain specialist nursing teams for diabetes and COPD would be transferred to Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester.
However, the acute hospital trust would not be allowed to manage community hospitals in Malvern, Evesham, Pershore, Bromsgrove and Tenbury Wells, a move supported by some GPs but not by Worcestershire County Council or staff at NHS Worcestershire.
Plans include closer working between community nursing and therapy services with those provided by GPs.
Staff are broadly supportive of the changes, according to staff representative Helen Gledhill, but they are “resolutely opposed” to any move which would put GPs or a private company in charge. Paul Bates, the chief executive, called the proposals “exciting” but said: “We believe that public and staff consultation needs to be far more extensive than anything we have managed to do so far and, following a general election, we would want to go to full consultation about the proposals.”
But John Smith, cabinet member for health improvement, who sits on the NHS Worcestershire board, said: “The timescale has been dangerous and if we’re not careful we’re going to be rushed into doing something which may not be in the best interests of all concerned.”
The chairman Dr Bryan Smith said: “We can’t consult until after a general election. It’s a rather bizarre and uneasy situation we find ourselves in.”
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