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

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.”

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

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

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Sweep out NHS privatisers, Save our A&Es protest is first – but not last – at Monitor office

Friday 15 Jan was the day that Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS market bureaucrats finally published their pre-consultation business plan for the hospital cuts that have been hanging over us all in Calderdale and Huddersfield for 2 years now.

It was also the day that members of Calderdale and Kirklees 999 Call for the NHS handed in 49 letters of protest to Monitor, the NHS market competition enforcer. (Kind of like Ofgem for the NHS.) Continue reading

Halifax people tell Monitor, sweep profiteering Ernst and Young out of our hospitals

On Saturday 28th November, hundreds of Halifax shoppers were shocked to discover that global accountancy company Ernst and Young (EY) is calling the shots over the future of Calderdale Royal Hospital and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary – at a budgeted cost to the hospitals Trust of £1m for 3 months work. Continue reading

Sweep Ernst and Young out of our hospitals on Saturday 28th November

On Saturday 28th November, Calderdale and Kirklees 999 Call for the NHS are taking to the street in Halifax, to protest against global management consultancy company EY (aka Ernst and Young) calling the shots over the future of Calderdale Royal Hospital and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.

999 Call for the NHS activists and supporters are going to sweep EY out of our hospitals between 11am-1pm, on Southgate, Halifax outside Wilkinsons. Or in the arcade side entrance to borough market if it’s raining.

Members of the public will be able to find out to help stop the hijack of the NHS by global management consultancy companies and their health insurance corporate cronies, and to support the NHS Reinstatement Bill. This cross-party Bill has its 2nd reading in the House of Commons in March 2016. Continue reading

Profiteering consultancy company Ernst and Young in charge of deciding the future of Calderdale and Huddersfield Hospitals Trust

In order to work out if the hospitals Trust is sustainable, given its deficit, the Trust has commissioned Ernst and Young (EY) to come up with a 5 Year Strategic Plan by the end of December 2015. The cost is expected to be £1m, according to a forecast in the Trust’s financial report to the October 29th Board meeting.  £1m for 3 months work seems like a good definition of exorbitant.

At the 21st October Calderdale and Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee, Councillors didn’t question why a profiteering, global management consultancy/accountancy company should decide the future of our hospitals, and the community health services that the hospitals Trust also provides. Continue reading

Scrutiny Committee Councillors need to up their game and protect #Calderdale and #Huddersfield hospitals

The Calderdale and Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee (JHSC) met on Wednesday 21 October, to find out what’s happening with the proposed hospital cuts and changes that are known as Right Care Right Time Right Place.

The meeting was like falling down Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole and arriving in time for the Lobster quadrille.

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you consult the public?

The recurring theme at the JHSC was: Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the Public Consultation dance?

JHSC 21 Oct._Quadrille_2

 

 

 

 

 

 

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