Category Archives: Social fairness

Care Closer to Home – too bad there’s little or no evidence it would work

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People are rightly very exercised about the proposed hospital cuts and A&E closure – but the proposals to move hospital services into the “community” are equally devastating.

This bit of the “Right Care Right Place Right Time” shake up – which should really be called “Less Care, Fragmented Hither and Yon” – has the potential to wreak destruction on the bit of the NHS that most of us use more than anything else – our GP/primary care services.

This is Part 2 of Plain Speaker’s attempt to begin to answer some key questions about so-called Care Closer to Home. (You can find Part 1 here) Continue reading →

Care Closer to Home – “Patients Will Suffer”

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Kirklees and Calderdale people are very upset about the proposed hospital cuts and changes and A&E closure – but related  proposals to move hospital services into the “community” are equally devastating. Continue reading →

Jeremy Hunt’s puppets’ useless response to hospital cuts financial case for change questions

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fish for jenny(2)_namedToday Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group – last summer accused by the Chair of Calderdale Council Adults Health & Social Care Scrutiny Panel of swimming around in their own little goldfish bowl instead of openly discussing issues with the public – sent me a singularly useless and uninformative response to questions I sent in for their 20th Jan 2016  meeting, held to rubber stamp their decision to “consult” the public on their hospital cuts plans. Continue reading →

Clinical Commissioners’ monkey business stymies public scrutiny of key consultation documents

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At the Kafka-esque Scrutiny meeting on 29th January, the Clinical Commissioning Groups’ monkey business meant that there was no consultation document on the hospital cuts for Calderdale and Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee (JHSC) members to scrutinise.

Today (4th February), the CCGs have sent JHSC members the full consultation documents, with a message that the documents are going to be signed off tomorrow and Councillors need to send any comments today! Continue reading →

Huddersfield and Calderdale hospitals on black alert again due to shortage of beds and staff

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On Wednesday 27 January, both Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Calderdale Royal Hospital (CRH) told staff they were  on “black alert” – not for the first time this year.

At the 12th January Junior Doctors Strike picket, a junior doctor said that CRH had been on black alert for most of the previous week.

Black alert is when the hospital can’t take any more patients because it hasn’t got beds for them. This means patients who come to A&E may spend time on trolleys in corridors before they can be admitted as inpatients. Continue reading →

Wakefield and Dewsbury hospitals groaning under pressures from same “clinical model” now proposed for Huddersfield and Calderdale

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Patients and NHS staff in North Kirklees and Wakefield are feeling the pressure of hospital cuts and changes that are about to be replicated in Kirklees and Calderdale, if NHS Commissioners have their way.

This is against the wishes of both Calderdale and Kirklees Councils, who have both unanimously passed motions rejecting the plans, and of scores of thousands of members of the public, who have joined various “2 Towns 1 Fight – keep both A&Es open” campaign groups.

This report looks at some the of the effects already apparent in North Kirklees and Wakefield, on patients, their families and friends, and NHS staff. Continue reading →

Impartial doctors can’t tell if unclear plan for Huddersfield hospital cuts & changes will provide required standard of care

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This is the second Plain Speaker report on the proposed hospital cuts that are scheduled for public consultation, starting at the end of February. If you’d like to find links to several other reports on different aspects of the proposals, they’re at the end of this report.

Here you can find out about:

  • Lack of evidence that these proposed changes will deliver the required standard of care
  • The danger of mixing up aspirational goals with political goals
  • An outline of proposed cuts and changes to hospital services
  • The loss of around 77 hospital beds
  • More detail about the proposal to knock down Huddersfield Royal Infirmary , sell the land and build a new 119 bed planned care clinic
  • The Equality Impact Assessment conclusion that making all Calderdale & Kirklees people go to Huddersfield for planned care could “cause a negative impact”
  • What planned care services everyone would have to travel to Huddersfield for
  • Services that would be available at both hospitals
  • Kirklees patients needing A&E would be sent to other “emergency care centres” – not necessarily Calderdale Royal Infirmary
  • The Huddersfield urgent care centre (and other urgent care centres at Halifax and Todmorden) may not even be staffed by a doctor
  • The Huddersfield planned care clinic/hospital would cut costs, through more day case and outpatients’ planned care, and shorter stay for inpatients
  • Moving whole swathes of planned care services out of hospital
  • Lack of information about the “financial case” for the hospital cuts and changes

Independent clinicians “in the dark” about standard of care if these cuts and changes happen

Lack of clarity in Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield NHS Commissioners’ Pre Consultation Business Case proposals for cutting and changing hospital services has left Clinical Senate doctors in the dark about the standard of care that would be available if these changes were to go ahead.

NHS Commissioners asked the Clinical Senate to review their proposals, specifically to

“answer questions regarding the ability of this model to deliver the standards proposed.”

But the doctors’ review says it can’t answer these questions, because

“The standards are…drawn from national documents but they are therefore very generic.”

Continue reading →

Two Towns, One Fight – why we have to keep both A&Es open 24/7

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This is the first Plain Speaker report on the hospital cuts plans that are scheduled for public consultation, starting at the end of February.

In it you can find out about:

  • Key elements of the plan – called Right Care Right Time Right Place
  • Why we need the NHS Reinstatement Bill
  • Why we need to keep both A&Es open
  • Lack of evidence that the proposals will deliver health care to the required standards
  • How successive governments have prioritised bailing out the bankers above properly funding public services for their own people
  • How Monitor (the NHS “market competition” regulator) and management consultancy company Ernst and Young (with a vested interest in NHS privatisation) are behind the CCGs’ proposal
  • A pattern of sacrificing publicly owned hospitals to protect PFI bankers’ profits

Continue reading →

Why NHS campaigners oppose the privatisers’ NHS Commission Bill

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Plain Speaker would urge everyone campaigning to save our A&Es in Calderdale and Huddersfield to beware of this NHS & Social Care Commission Bill and not to give it your support.

Many NHS campaigners across the country are signing a public letter stating that we are extremely concerned that the Bill for the Commission is misleading at best, and deceitful at worst. We urge MPs who have the interests of the public, rather than the vested interests of the private health sector, as their main concern, to refuse support for this Commission. Continue reading →

How to refuse consent for your GP to pass your fit note records to DWP

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If you have a sick note/fit note from your GP, or are going to ask for one, come February 2016 you will need to explicitly tell your GP you refuse consent for them to pass your ‘fit note’ records onto the Department of Works & Pensions (DWP).

In a measure that a doctor has described as ‘state snooping’ – as reported in Pulse magazine –  the government has told GPs that they must pass on their patients’ fit note records to the DWP, and that although GPs must inform patients this is happening, the only way they – and you – can stop it happening is for patients to explicitly refuse their consent. Continue reading →