A national NHS boss has said it would be a shame if “historic loyalties” affected plans to shake-up hospital care in Huddersfield and Calderdale.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers – a support group for hospital trusts – said moves to restructure care across the Royal Infirmary and Calderdale Royal were necessary for the sake of patient safety.
Speaking to the Examiner during a visit to Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, he said trust chief Owen Williams and his team were “busting a gut”, doing some of the most interesting work in the country in terms of collaborating with other parts of the health system amid the worst “financial squeeze” in the history of the NHS.
Health officials are currently re-considering the controversial restructuring plan that would see HRI become the main hospital for emergency care with the only A&E operating 24/7 in Kirklees and Calderdale. The move could see hundreds of beds closed at Calderdale Royal and the Halifax hospital’s emergency department downgraded to a minor injuries unit.
The plan was put on hold last year but is expected to re-surface in September.
Dewsbury Hospital has already been given the green light to scale back A&E services at night time although consultants and full resuscitation facilities will still be available seven-days-a-week.
Mr Hopson said: “Given that we’re in this very long period of money being tight, you have to ask the question, can we carry on, particularly where hospitals are very close to each other, of every single district hospital providing every single service.
“To be frank it’s not just a question of the money, it’s also a question of quality of service.
“What everybody is finding is it’s becoming more and more difficult to recruit the right quality of workforce and it’s becoming more difficult to recruit the right numbers of workforce.
“I accept that does mean some very difficult decisions.
“But I think it would be a great pity if the debate was just about historic loyalty to very long standing institutions.
“I think the debate needs to be, with doctors having a very strong voice, what is the best quality of service for the patients and where does the risk lie? “
Mr Hopson said it was clear to him that in lots of cases the increase in journey times was a sacrifice worth paying.
But he said it was “key” that doctors and clinicians had a strong voice in any overhaul of services.
He added: “I accept there’s very strong historical loyalties (to hospitals) but equally it’s only 15 minutes between the two towns.
“I visited a trust in Somerset where the nearest hospital was an hour in each direction.
“There’s just no way you could think about sharing services in that case, but in places like Manchester, where services are no more than five or six miles away and are very well served by transport links, it seems to me not unreasonable to get a debate going about a 20 minute bus ride, versus higher patient care, versus the ability to ensure the services are sustainable.
“We do need to have the debate.“
Manchester has already been earmarked as the first place to take full control of its own health budget in the so called Devo-Manc project.
Cornwall has also been confirmed as an area for health devolution.
