For the first time since the process of closing accident and emergency units in hospitals up and down the country was started by the last Labour government, and driven forward by the coalition, statistics about the effect closures have on patient mortality have been produced.
Until now every closure has been justified by the government as being in the best interest of patients.
With no evidence to back them up, claims are made that closing down A&E departments and replacing them with ‘urgent care’ and ‘minor injuries’ units, which are banned from treating life-threatening conditions, and requiring seriously ill people to travel miles by ambulance to some ‘superhospital’ – would actually save more lives.
With no evidence to back them up, claims are made that closing down A&E departments and replacing them with ‘urgent care’ and ‘minor injuries’ units, which are banned from treating life-threatening conditions, and requiring seriously ill people to travel miles by ambulance to some ‘superhospital’ – would actually save more lives.
Now the statistics prove that A&E closures result in more deaths.
The figures were obtained under a freedom of information request for Newark General Hospital in Nottinghamshire which lost its A&E department two years ago.
These show that since closure of the A&E there has been a 37% rise in emergency patient deaths.
In 2009, before A&E closure, 5,431 patients were admitted for emergency treatment, of these 192 died (3.53%).
Last year, after closure, 5,441 were admitted with 264 dying (4.85%).
If the same percentage of deaths had been achieved last year as in 2009 then there would have been 72 fewer deaths in just one area in just one year!
A consultant from North West London, where five out of nine A&E units are earmarked for closure, said: ‘Newark tells us what happens when you close A&E.’
Precisely, the closure of hospital A&E units has absolutely nothing to do with patient care and everything to do with the overriding concern of the Tory-led coalition to cut spending on the NHS to the bone and beyond and to hell with patients’ lives.
Along with these closures have been the cuts inflicted on the ambulance service – the very service which is supposed to ferry emergency cases miles to the nearest hospital that still retains a 24 hour emergency centre.
In turn, these closures are throwing more and more strain on A&E units that remain as the number of emergency patients remains constant while facilities are dramatically cut.
The overall picture is one of NHS emergency services on the brink of total collapse as a result of the government’s drive to slash the health budget and plough the money into the hands of the privateers and the military, as they are proposing.
This crisis was admitted last week by David Prior the ex-Tory MP who now runs the NHS regulatory body.
Prior’s solution to the crisis in A&E was, incredibly, to cut even further the number of beds in hospitals!
It couldn’t be clearer – the response of the coalition to this life-threatening crisis is to demand deeper and wider cuts until there is nothing left of the NHS and medicine is completely privatised or shut down.
For this reason, appeals to the government to stop closing A&E units and entire hospitals will be ignored.
As far as the government is concerned, capitalism cannot afford an NHS and so it has to go, regardless of the cost in human lives.
Next Saturday, campaigning groups and trade unions will be demonstrating in London against hospital closures.
The demands of this demonstration cannot be left on the level of appeals to the government to alter course – the demand must be for action, for the building of Councils of Action in every area to organise occupations to prevent closures.
Such defensive action must go hand-in-hand with an all-out offensive against a bankrupt capitalist system through the organisation of a general strike to bring down the government and replace it with a workers government that will advance to a socialist system that will not just protect the NHS but extend it to meet the needs of everyone.
