Minutes:
GQ1 fromCouncillor Mullane:
"I understand that the CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) have decided to close the Walk-in Centre at Broad Street. My experience, and that of a lot of local residents, is that it is very hard to get an appointment quickly to see a GP even during their normal consulting hours let alone in the evening or weekends. Surely it cannot be in everyone’s best interests for more people to feel they have no alternative for urgent help to go to A&E at Queen’s Hospital. Given the report to their Governing Body accepted that for this to work then local people would need to have better access to their GPs, are you confident the proposals you have seen are strong enough to make the new system work when the Walk-in Centre at Broad Street closes next March?"
Response from Councillor Worby, Cabinet Member for Health:
“Thank you for asking this question. I am not going to take the easy option by saying “no”. As you quite rightly pointed out, we have got an A&E service that is failing in our local hospital.
The CCG says it has concerns about a hospital that has 150,000 visits when it was built for 90,000, but say that it will not be a problem, as no one will go to A&E because our GPs are going to provide 25,000 new appointments a year. It is no good providing 25,000 appointments that fall within normal surgery times. That is not what emergency is all about. Our residents need appointments at times that work for them. Are the GPs going to open at weekends? I doubt it. Will all the practices have these appointments available? It's not clear.
This is not the only issue. The minute Broad Street is not open, people will go to Upney and there is already a four hour wait at Upney.
So, no, I have no confidence. We have made it clear at the Health & Wellbeing Board and the Health & Adult Services Select Committee that we do not see how this is going to work. The CCG are planning to introduce a pilot on improvements to primary care in August this year and shutting Broad Street in March 2014.
We will be doing our best to make sure that we make them change their minds.
GQ2 from Councillor Carpenter:
"Can the Cabinet Member let us know about the steps being taken to ensure that mid- Staffordshire will not happen in our local hospitals?"
Response from Councillor Worby, Cabinet Member for Health:
"Thank you for asking this question.
To be perfectly honest, we have not got a Mid-Staffordshire here. They had a whole system failure – quality of care, attention to the patients. An NHS system that was basically getting numbers through the door rather than asking what the patients were there for in the first place. And this year we are celebrating 65 years of the NHS.
The Francis report published earlier this year, has acknowledged that it was not the failure of one individual member of staff – it was all of them. No one was listening or worrying about the quality of care that people got.
The Francis report is really complicated – it has 290 recommendations. They are not just for the hospital; they are for the whole system.
There are recommendations and questions for us – is our scrutiny function strong enough, are we asking the right questions, are we listening to the families? Mid-Staffordshire wasn’t about no one knowing, it was about no one listening.
So, how do we put this on the top of the agenda?
We have asked the local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to go through some of those recommendations and to a certain extent, the CCG are the best people to question. We have commissioned the local Healthwatch and the Health & Adult Services Select Committee for a session and we will be doing a briefing in October.
We should not kid ourselves. What we can do in this Chamber is to ensure that we hear that voice – if we have friends and family in hospital, do not walk away.
We have to make that voice loud enough not to be ignored, even if the nurses are busy."
The meeting closed at 7.35 pm.