THE meeting of the Great Yarmouth and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group (Health East) last Friday was met by angry protesters organised by Lowestoft Against the Cuts as they met to confirm that two community hospitals were to be closed.
The hospitals are to be replaced by an ‘out of hospital team’ and placing patients who cannot be cared for in their own homes in private care homes. During a ‘consultation’ only 21% supported the closure of hospitals in Southwold and Halesworth; even fewer wanted the beds in Northgate in Great Yarmouth and All Hallows near Bungay scrapped.
The consultation was an unquestioned success – extra meetings were needed to cater for demand and over 1,100 returned the detailed questionnaire. However, the views of the local population were ignored. Out of hospital teams are good for some but hospital beds are needed for others, both for minor treatments and for convalescence close to home.
Lowestoft Hospital has already been closed and the 21 beds retained in Beccles to service vast swathes of Norfolk and Suffolk are too few and too distant. There is already critical pressure on the James Paget hospital which is frequently on ‘Black Alert’. Duncan Peacock, lead consultant at James Paget Hospital A&E has said that hospital managers across the UK had been ‘pressured by government to say we need less beds, the reality is we need more beds’.
The NHS is faced with an increase in the number of particularly elderly patients, yet it was told to find £20bn of ‘efficiency savings’ over five years. Staff paid for this through frozen salaries. Now they have to find another £20bn. The purpose of the plan put forward by Health East’s CEO Andy Evans is to cut £4.3m from the health budget.
Closing and selling off hospital buildings and sending patients to private care homes is the Evans’ formula which may be repeated in other areas. In Reyden, near Southwold, the NHS is providing land for a care home. In Halesworth land acquired for public use will be built on. It isn’t just community hospitals. The local mental health trust is in special measures and in massive debt; the James Paget Hospital faces escalating deficits and is in official dispute with Health East over funding.
Two surgeries in Lowestoft, one in the vaunted new health centre, have been closed down by court order. The idea of placing patients in care homes is particularly worrying in the area. Nine Lowestoft care homes are failing the CQC’s criteria; some have failed repeatedly yet they remain open.
At one, Orme House, Food and Safety Team found ‘potentially life changing risks i.e. legionella control, asbestos management, gas safety, electrical safety, lifting equipment, falls from height and matters of evident concern’ as well as ‘faeces on walls, doors and equipment, mattresses heavily stained by human waste, broken bedroom furniture with nails exposed, damp and mould growth in bedrooms, exposed electrical conductors and an inaccessible fire escape’.
In a survey by the British Medical Association (BMA) ninety five per cent of doctors said that the NHS ‘reforms’ have resulted in lower quality of service and three quarters of them said that it would make integrating services more difficult.