GP concerns about WCH

Twenty-five local GPs from Copeland and Allerdale have written to the Whitehaven News expressing concerns about proposals for services at West Cumberland Hospital, particularly maternity and paediatrics.

The doctors said: “We are deeply concerned, in light of recent comments, that the medical director of our acute trust neither appears to recognise the special challenges of providing maternity services in our area, nor be prepared to await the advice of the expert panel that the Clinical Commissioning Group has brought together to review these issues.”

The full text of the letter can be read on the Whitehaven News website at

http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/letters/you-say/our-families-need-these-vital-services-1.1176325

A spokesperson for North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust responded as follows:

“Our very firm intention is that more, not less, patients will be treated in West Cumbria in the future. We are already starting to see this happen and even following the important safety changes made in 2013 to transfer high risk surgery, we have seen an overall increase in emergency admissions at West Cumberland Hospital, from 11,167 to 11,327, over the past year. We are also seeing the number of planned operations and day case procedures increase and have seen over 7,500 more diagnostic tests take place at West Cumberland Hospital in the past year.
 
“The new West Cumberland Hospital will continue to have a 24-hour A&E, medical admissions, intensive care as well as paediatric and maternity care. That is without question. We must, however, make sure that all of our services are as safe as possible and we know that some services are not as safe as they should be.

“From next week we will be engaging with all stakeholders about our ideas to improve safety and solve some of the longstanding problems that have never been truly addressed in North Cumbria over many years. We look forward to hearing from all GPs as part of this"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more