Ealing Hospital Campaigners Continue Campaign
Petition handed in over proposals to contract out more services
Campaigners fighting to save hospital services in Ealing have handed in a petition opposing current contracting-out changes.
Over 1100 people have signed against plans which would put district nursing and other community health services into what they describe as a market-style “single contract”. It also rejects the notion that community care can replace hospital beds at Ealing Hospital.
Eve Turner, Secretary of Ealing Save Our NHS ( ESON) said :
“Contracting out of services is completely the wrong medicine. Instead of turning our health services into a market place with contracts and fixed budgets, The CCG should be spending our NHS money on urgently needed front line care. This contract made NHS Trusts bid against each other at a cost of millions. ESON also believes the unusual 10-year contract worth up to £1.3 billion is highly risky in the current economic climate. Written into the contract is an aspiration to replace hospital beds with community services, which we also believe is both wrong and unworkable.”
Meanwhile the capital bid for £260 million, to support the North West London NHS re-configuration plans - which would pave the way for downgrading Ealing Hospital from a major to a local hospital - has been rejected.
Campaigners say it means the five-year 'Shaping a Healthier Future' plan, adopted in 2012, which involved reducing emergency admissions and the need for hospital beds by caring for patients in the community, is still underfunded.
Ealing Save Our NHS and Ealing Council have both continually opposed the plans as unworkable. and pointed to the fact that the reduction in bed use and emergency admissions (called non-elective admissions) has not happened with statistics showing emergency admissions are rising.
However, North West London NHS bosses went ahead and closed two A&Es as well as Maternity and Acute Children’s Services at Ealing Hospital. They have also, as reported in the national media, spent £66 million pounds on 41 different management consultancies.
Oliver New from Ealing Save Our NHS said:
“Apparently there’s millions to spend on highly paid management consultants and NHS senior management projects, while at the same time front line services are desperate for funding. It’s time our well-paid health bosses finally faced up to the fact ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ isn’t working, won’t work and can’t work. The resources should instead be put into Ealing Hospital, where long suffering staff have been working under a shadow. Ealing should continue as a proper District General Hospital, not a so-called local hospital.''
17 December 2018