Via The Bucks Free Press, news of the imposed temporary suspension of the midwife-led maternity unit at Wycombe Hospital due to staff shortages:
WYCOMBE Hospital’s maternity unit will close tomorrow for three months because of a staff shortage.
As previously reported in The Bucks Free Press, the Wycombe Birth Centre will close while midwives are trained.
You can find a summary of my actions here, including an account of the problem, my call for radical health reform and an editorial backing my call. I have received commitments to the reopening of the unit in the Autumn in writing, in public at the Bucks overview and scrutiny committee meeting and in a private meeting with health bosses and the Health Minister, Simon Burns MP.
As I have said before, we need fair funding, local control and freedom for clinical professionals. The Government’s proposed health reforms should deliver just that and I will be playing my part in seeing them through. We need practical changes which put local patients and GPs in charge.
It’s time we moved past the present structures of top-down control, which manufacture resentment and despair. I have proposed an independent midwife-led maternity cooperative for Wycombe: I am currently seeking to visit an independent unit in London to learn more.
You can find my health articles here.
