Hospital Services at Watford, Hemel Hempstead and St Albans

At its November meeting the Board of West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust made far reaching decisions, after full public consultation. The trust's three hospitals - at Watford, Hemel Hempstead and St Albans - will all retain outpatient and diagnostic facilities and provide urgent care.

However all emergency services will be provided at Watford General Hospital, which is to have a new 100 bed Acute Admissions Unit, on the site of the present Post Graduate Centre, beside A&E. This will be built as soon as possible, ahead of the complete rebuild, which lies further ahead. All elective surgery will be done at St Albans City Hospital.

These decisions were a great disappointment to residents of Hemel Hempstead, who had campaigned hard to retain services at their hospital. The plan to build a surgicentre at Hemel Hempstead is also under threat, which causes them additional distress.

This trust is fighting its mammoth financial deficit by consolidating its services onto three sites. It is leaving its fourth site, at Mount Vernon Hospital, by the end of March 2007. Then Mount Vernon will host only three NHS trusts - Hillingdon Hospital, East & North Herts Hospitals (cancer services) and the Royal Free Hampstead Hospital (plastic surgery). There will still be plenty of scope for management wrangles!

Joan Davis

Hilllingdon Council looks at local health issues

Local council's are the official watchdogs on NHS health services. When necessary, they have the right of direct access to the Secretary of State.

The November meeting of Hillingdon's External Services Scrutiny Committee focused on three NHS service providers - Hillingdon Hospital, the London Ambulance Service and Hillingdon Primary Care Trust.

Community Voice was well represented - both the Committee Chairman and one of its members are also Community Voice members, and a number of other Community Voice members sat in the public gallery.

Both the new Mount Vernon Treatment Centre and the rebuild of Hillingdon Hospital are expected to go ahead. Eventually 95% of elective surgery will be done at Mount Vernon.

Our long campaign for an ambulance station in Ruislip is bearing fruit at last. The LAS is completing negotiations to build a permanent Ambulance Station in the car park off Pembroke Road, behind shops at Ruislip Manor traffic lights. Temporary accommodation may be put there early in 2007, before erection of the permanent building.

The Primary Care Trust is tackling its huge financial deficit - now expected to be �18 million for the year ending March 2007 - by improving efficiency, setting up an Urgent Care Centre at Hillingdon Hospital (to keep people out of A&E), and introducing a Rapid Response Team to care for patients in crisis in their own homes (to keep them out of hospital).

Northwood & Pinner Community Hospital is facing temporary closure. Its only current patient service, physiotherapy, is being found a temporary home off-site, on health and safety grounds. Both the PCT and the Scrutiny Committee have promised full public consultation on the hospital's future. Community Voice has always been its champion. It is a war memorial, built by public subscription, so there is much to defend.

Joan

The Media and Community Voice

It has not been the practice to allow the media to attend our monthly meetings as this might inhibit our guest speakers in Part One of the meeting.

But at our last meeting our speaker, Mr. Antony Sumara, Chief Executive Officer of Hillingdon PCT, said he had no objections to the media being present, "He had nothing to hide ."

After much discussion the Executive Committee decided to invite the media to some future meetings.

Hospital Transport between Mount Vernon & Royal Free Hospital

The Mini-bus is a white ten seater with a rear ramp for easy access. It is NOT capable of transporting a patient in a wheelchair. The bus carries both staff and patients between the hospitals. Journey time is about an hour depending on the time of day and traffic conditions.

TIMETABLE

LEAVING MOUNT VERNON
6.30am
10.15am
12.45pm
3.15pm
7.00pm

LEAVING ROYAL FREE HOSPITAL
8.15am
11.30am
2.00am
5.15pm
8.30pm


The bus leaves from outside the Reception, by the entrance steps of the Main Building at Mount Vernon Hospital, which is opposite the Post Graduate Centre. Similarly the bus leaves from outside the main reception at The Royal Free Hospital.
The bus usually leaves on time.

Wonderful News!

A new hospital is NOT to be built at Hatfield. The Mount Vernon Cancer Centre will NOT be moving to Hatfield as planned. The Community Voice is overjoyed!

This news was released to the public in typical NHS fashion - in the middle of an obscure East & North Herts Primary Care Trust report, published on a Friday afternoon. It deserved to be in headlines at the top of TV news!

We fought relentlessly to keep our cancer centre on its site in Mount Vernon Hospital, so this is wonderful news. At the very least it means reprieve for a long time ahead. Any further proposals to move it - the biggest cancer centre south of Birmingham - would take years to plan.

But this is not the time to simply sit back and cheer. We want our cancer centre to have a long life ahead, to serve our children and theirs. So be warned, there may be a tough fight ahead, despite champagne corks popping now.

Joan

Change for the Better

The consultation for the future medical services in Harrow and Brent is about to be launched!

Four public meetings are to be held later in November under the auspices of Brent and Harrow PCTs and the North West London Hospitals. Further meetings will probably be held later. Dates to note are:

Harrow
21 November, 2.00 - 4.00 pm at Wealdstone Centre, 38-40 HHIgh Street, HA3 7AE
24 November, 10.00 - 12.00 noon at Harrovian Business Village, Bessborough Road, HA1 3EX

Brent
20 November, 7.00 - 9.00 pm at Willesden Library, 95 High Road, NW10 2SF
27 November, 2.30 - 4.30 pm at Bridge Park Leisure Centre, Harrow Road, NW10 0RG

Have a say in your health care! Further information about the meetings and future workshops contact Kalpna Vekaria, tel 020 8869 2014.

Paul Samet

Community Voice November Meeting

A splendid meeting! Record attendance, new members, and actually getting this speaker was a coup in itself!

Antony Sumara, new Chief Executive of Hillingdon Primary Care Trust, had been in post less than three weeks when he came as our speaker. He took over the commitments of the previous CEO, Ian Ayres - so we were lucky to get him.

He summed up the dire straits of the PCT - outlined in our report of the PCT Board meeting. How will he tackle this financial deficit, expected to reach a total of �65m by next March?

Nothing concrete was forthcoming, but he sounded remarkably like the four other CEOs of the last fifteen months, so he will need a touch of magic to do better than them. We will watch him closely.

The meeting was lively, lots of questions, around 70 people in the hall and we had the pleasure of admitting two new members. We now have 52 organisations, plus nearly as many individuals. The new individual member, Mike Chapman noted that until two days before he was a non-Executive member of Hillingdon PCT - needless to say we are delighted to welcome him!

Joan Davis