This morning, I visited the Oakridge Health Centre, where children with additional needs and their parents can access a range of therapies through the Toy Library. I was truly inspired by the resilience, determination and love of the parents I met and by their children, who defy expectations with their progress.
If you wish to discover the importance and effectiveness of physiotherapy and speech therapy in liberating people to fulfill their potential, then I recommend Paul Maynard MP’s dazzling and humbling maiden speech.
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.
Over at CentreRight, I explain why I support Andrew Lansley’s health reforms:
In terms of the anxiety and concern felt by Wycombe constituents, no other issue compares to the future of our hospital and local health care. That’s why, as MP for Wycombe, the NHS is my top local priority.
Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley today set out the Government’s ambitious plans to reform the NHS during this Parliament and for the long-term.
The White Paper ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’ published today, details how power will be devolved from Whitehall to patients and professionals.
Professionals will be free to focus on improving health outcomes so that these are amongst the best in the world. Improving the quality of care will become the main purpose of the NHS.
Patients will get more choice and control, backed by an information revolution, so that services are more responsive to patients and designed around them, rather than patients having to fit around services. The principle will be “no decisions about me without me”.
Under the new plans, patients will be able to choose which GP practice they register with, regardless of where they live, and choose between consultant-led teams. More comprehensive and transparent information, such as patients’ own ratings, will help them make these choices together with healthcare professionals.
Groups of GPs will be given freedom and responsibility for commissioning care for their local communities. Providers of services will have new freedoms and they will be more accountable. There will be greater competition in the NHS and greater cooperation. Services will be more joined up, supported by a new role for Local Authorities to support integration across health and social care.
As a result of the changes, the NHS will be streamlined with fewer layers of bureaucracy. Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts will be phased out. Management costs will be reduced so that as much resource as possible supports frontline services. The reforms build on changes started under the previous Government.
Download the whitepaper here and, if you are a Wycombe constituent, please send any feedback via my contact page.
Doctors are to be given sole responsibility for overseeing front-line care to patients under Coalition plans described as the biggest revolution in the NHS since its foundation 60 years ago.
About £80billion will be distributed to family GPs in a move that will see strategic health authorities and primary care trusts scrapped.
The plan, contained in a white paper to be published next week, is designed to place key decisions about how patients are cared for in the hands of doctors who know them. Tens of thousands of administrative jobs in the health service will be lost as a result.
A doctor and Conservative candidate writes on health reform and it’s very much to the point of our local experience:
A renewal of the NHS must not be piecemeal or deal with the symptoms. It must tackle the fundamental flaws – in its management, its funding, and the maintenance of professional standards. And there is a belief that getting all those things right could actually save the Treasury a lot of money while at the same time give the public a superior service.
Tim Hewish is my Parliamentary Assistant. I asked him yesterday to attend a Westminster Hall debate on my behalf. In this post, he sets out what he learned.
Yesterday I was able to attend the Westminster Hall Debate on the Westmorland General Hospital obtained by Tim Farron MP who discussed the closure of the A&E services from one of his local hospitals. What Tim conveyed was not just the sense of loss, but also the strife and hardship that it caused and the resulting years of effort he has put in campaigning for the return of a much needed service to his rural constituents.
He spoke of the 27,000 signatures which were against the closure of A&E and of the 6,000 letters sent in by constituents, he even informed us of the 4,000 strong human chain around the Hospital which was one of the stronger forms of protest.
During this, I kept thinking about the loss of services at Wycombe both in terms of A&E and the maternity unit (which I was born in) and how we too will be entering into a similar struggle trying to return greater local control over our services. Though there were signs of hope from Tim. He asked erudite questions, such as asking Ministers to find records of success of Westmorland Hospital when it had A&E and then to compare this with the other local hospitals and to ask whether they were really any better or worse than the ones that stayed open.
He also told us of when he joined the paramedics on night shift, which gave him first hand accounts of how long it actually took to transfer patients from the scene of the accident to the now distant hospital that did provide A&E services. Listening to this, I recalled the local story a few months ago of two expectant mothers having to give birth in ambulances because the distance and time it would have taken to drive to Stoke Mandeville would have been too great.
Tim finished by asking yet another pertinent question that if the issues surrounding closure were about safety he wanted to know when services became less safe and then asked what was the safety impact to the local population when these services were withdrawn.
Action such as the petitions, letters and human chains goes someway as does questions like the ones Mr. Ferron proposed. All good lessons to learn for our coming campaigns in Wycombe.
I’ll be following up this intervention directly on behalf of constituents:
Steven Baker (Wycombe, Conservative): I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend Tony Baldry on securing this debate, and I note the Minister’s diligent concern for Horton hospital. Will he consider the case of Wycombe hospital, which is somewhat further down the route upon which the Horton had embarked, and our local services?
Simon Burns (Minister of State (Health), Health; Chelmsford, Conservative): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing that to my attention. Given the constraints of time in this debate, if he were to be kind enough to write or to come and see me, I would be more than happy to discuss the situation with him.
MORE services could be axed from Wycombe Hospital – leading the town’s new MP to pledge to ‘fight to keep what we’ve got’.
A major consultation on the future of hospital in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire is to be launched in the coming months that will radically re-shape services.
No details have been given of service affected – but Wycombe MP Steve Baker and bosses have pledged to fight to keep stroke, cardiac and vascular care.
I’m off to Wycombe Hospital in a moment to visit with Anne Eden, Chief Executive of Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust. This follows a meeting with Ed Macalister-Smith of Bucks PCT last week.
I very much look forward to working with both organisations to make the progress we need on healthcare reform.
Last night, while I attended the Wycombe Conservative Association AGM, Paul Goodman MP attended a meeting just outside the new constituency boundaries to consider the future of Wycombe Hospital and Marlow Community Hospital.
HEALTH bosses were lambasted tonight for sending no one to face questions from members of the public worried about the future of Wycombe Hospital.
Speakers slammed The Primary Care Trust and NHS Buckinghamshire for saying nobody was available to attend, describing their decision as “appalling” and “scandalous”.
Around 200 residents attended the meeting at Great Marlow School, Bobmore Lane, Marlow, which was organised by Marlow People’s Action Group.
Many expressed their fears for the future of Wycombe Hospital and Marlow Community Hospital in Glade Road – despite strong denials this week from health chiefs that either is in danger.
Members of the public are quite right that the NHS is insufficiently accountable to local people. Buckinghamshire health services are underfunded. On top of it all, clinical professionals carry an unacceptable burden of bureaucracy and reorganisation.
This is why I am calling for fair funding, local control and freedom for clinical professionals. As Paul pointed out, becoming a self-governing Foundation Trust would help enormously and we can only achieve that with fair funding. Further local control can be achieved with local commissioning by GPs. Please show your support by signing the petition below.
Meanwhile, we must pursue our campaign for local hospital services against the backdrop provided by today’s Daily Telegraph, which claims:
Tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments under secret plans for £20 billion of health cuts.
The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped.
The plans have emerged as health chiefs draw up emergency budgets that cast doubt on pledges by Gordon Brown to protect “front line services” in the NHS.
Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country.
Before voting, the public deserve to know the choice they face.
I was delighted that Labour agent Mr Barlow hailed Paul as a “fantastic MP”. I can assure him and all electors that I have every intention of diligently taking forward Paul’s great work.
I am grateful to Cliff Webb, the franchisee of McDonalds, High Wycombe, for a visit yesterday. Cliff employs over 200 people.
It seems to me that McDonalds comes in for some unfair criticism. The franchise succeeds because it provides food that people want at the right price and level of service. Those who don’t like the firm and its food don’t have to eat there.
Notwithstanding Super Size Me, it’s common sense that one cannot live by McDonalds alone. I wonder if it is strictly necessary for the government to say so. If substantial numbers of people now cannot figure out for themselves what a healthy, balanced diet looks like, how did this come to pass and are the self same people reading the government’s guidelines?
Update
One of my fine academic colleagues has supplied this quote:
McDonald’s has made more millionaires, and especially black and Hispanic millionaires, than any other economic entity ever, anywhere.
– George Will, “Lovin’ It All Over”, Washington Post, December 27, 2007
Today, I am launching my Wycombe Hospital campaign for fair funding, local control and freedom for clinical professionals.
Time and again, local people tell me of their concern about the loss of services at Wycombe Hospital. As we can see from the recent campaign on Facebook, thousands are dismayed that we have lost maternity services. Others are deeply concerned about the lack of full-service accident and emergency care. We all know distressing accounts of inadequate health care and local doctors have told me they are fed up with constraints and reorganisations.
We need to get to the root of the problem and change our NHS for the better. You can find the campaign and sign our petition here.
The WHO’s “false pandemic” flu campaign is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,” according to Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, chairman the PACE Health Committee, who introduced the parliamentary motion. “The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the influence of drug-sellers,” he adds.
Is this really the best way to secure public health?
Up to 10,000 people die needlessly of cancer every year because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government’s director of cancer services. The figure is twice the previous estimate for preventable deaths.
Earlier detection of symptoms could save between 5,000 and 10,000 lives in England a year, Prof Mike Richards will reveal this week. The higher figure is nearly twice his previous calculation, which put the figure at about 5,000.
We need to set clinical professionals free to look systematically at these problems and deal with them, which is surely why they went into medicine in the first place.
Health service managers warned of an “Armageddon scenario” facing NHS finances as they draw up secret plans for swingeing hospital cuts.
Senior officials have set “aggressive” targets to reduce the number of patients referred to specialists, or treated in Accident and Emergency departments, while GPs will be asked to cut down on the amount of time spent in consultations.
The plans are being issued as senior managers warned that the NHS is about to face the greatest financial pressures since its inception.
They fear that when the current spending round ends in 2011, the impact of an anticipated real terms freeze or cuts – coming as the demands on the NHS of an ageing population increases – will be devastating.
Right now, my stepfather is terminally ill with lung cancer. I spent last week with him and Mum. This gave the opportunity for several conversations with NHS, Marie Curie and Macmillan nurses. They already know services are on the brink and that substantial, frankly unacceptable cuts in front line services are planned. For example, one of the home nursing services will be reduced to telephone support.
The money has run out. Too much money is being spent on management. Too much emphasis has been placed on degree qualification for nurses, a feature which experienced and very good nurses know would have excluded them.
Each of the nurses with whom I spoke wants to see NHS reform. In each case, I recommended Nurses for Reform.
A total ban on alcohol advertising must be introduced by the Government to halt an epidemic of problem drinking, doctors’ leaders said today.
A report from the British Medical Association (BMA) has called for a sea change in the approach to alcohol regulation to halt promotions including happy hours and sponsorship of music and sports events.
The move is necessary to stem the invidious ways it is promoted, particularly to young people, it said.
There are who knows how many possible bad decisions in life; are we to resort to force to avert each one? Would anyone disagree with the assertion that over-consumption of alcohol is not only harmful in itself but leads to behaviour with harmful consequences? Of course people should drink in moderation — but where does the path of all-round compulsion lead? What else shall we protect people from?
What matters if we are to have a good society — a free and open society — is what lies within us: our values and beliefs, our thoughts and ideas, our emotions. This constant resort to compulsion will not deliver a healthy, happy society. It will create a destructive cycle of resentment, harmful actions and exhortation. Enough.
It is time for a change of heart. It is time for personal responsibility and freely-made good choices. That means letting people carry the consequences of their actions and punishing them when they trespass on the liberties of others. It means the government getting out of the education system permanently so that teachers can get on with delivering a good education to the satisfaction of parents. Maybe where parents and teachers do not know what good choices look like, special action will be unavoidable, but that is possible without resorting to the total state.
