One life. Live it.

Outside Wycombe Hospital

A crucial public consultation on the future of Wycombe Hospital began on 16 January. It is being run by Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Wycombe Hospital. This is our chance to have our say on proposals to change how NHS services are provided in High Wycombe.

The exercise runs until 16 April and there are consultation meetings scheduled throughout the area every week in February. I urge everyone who cares about the future of our hospital to take part.

Click here for an explanation of the proposed changes and the schedule of public consultation meetings you can attend.

Ever since I was first selected  as the Conservative candidate for Wycombe, I have been working hard with local supporters of Wycombe Hospital. We are all keen to see services in the hands of the community and removed from further creeping centralisation and losses of service provision. So I welcome the Government’s intent in these current health reforms, which aim to move all NHS Trusts to NHS Foundation Trust status by April 2014 and to pass responsibility for purchasing patient care from Primary Care Trusts to the newly formed GP consortia a year before that.

This is a continuation of Labour Policy under the Blair government. NHS Foundation Trusts were introduced by Labour in the 2003 Health and Social Care Act as legally independent public benefit corporations. They are: 

• Authorised and regulated by an independent regulator, known as Monitor;
• Accountable to their local communities through a system of local ownership with members and elected governors – the governors being elected by the members;
• Not required to break even each year although they must be financially viable. They can borrow money within limits set by the regulator, retain surpluses and decide on service development for their local populations;
• Free from central government control and strategic health authority performance management; and
• Required to lay their annual reports and accounts before Parliament each year.

There was a move to switch to Foundation status in Bucks during 2008 that was unsuccessful due to financial constraints. This initiative will be revived and a new submission is to be made in September 2012. I would encourage members of the public to support this move to Foundation status so that local people, as members and governors, can have much more direct control over Buckinghamshire hospitals.

My concerns are that Foundation Trusts may become too large and controlled from remote centres. That would be the opposite of both the Government’s vision and my own of a devolved and cooperative local arrangement. We need to avoid the bureaucracy and lack of accountability which has plagued the NHS locally for so long.

In the meantime, I again urge everyone interested in future of health provision in Wycombe to join in the consultation process. NHS consultations are currently how local voices are heard and I think it vital that hundreds of local people take part.

An elector came to see me about parking, but we soon found ourselves discussing the treatment her father had received at Wycombe Hospital. The story was truly heart-rending.

I’ll be following up on that story, but for the moment, let me just say that it put me very much in mind of the account given by David Cameron in his 2008 Conference Speech:

In August, I got a letter from one of my constituents, John Woods. His wife was taken to hospital. She caught MRSA and she died. Some of the incidents described are so dreadful, and so degrading, that I can’t read you most of the letter. He says the treatment his wife received “was like something out of a 17th century asylum not a 21st century £90 billion health service.” And then, as his wife’s life was coming to end, he remembers her “sitting on the edge of her bed in distress and saying ‘I never thought it would be like this’.” I sent the letter to Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary.

This was his reply.

“A complaints procedure has been established for the NHS to resolve concerns…

“Each hospital and Primary Care Trust has a Patient Advice and Liaison Service to support people who wish to make a complaint…

“There is also an Independent Complaints Advocacy Service…

“If, when Mr Woods has received a response, he remains dissatisfied, it is open to him to approach the Healthcare Commission and seek an independent review of his complaint and local organisation’s response…

“Once the Health Care Commission has investigated the case he can approach the Health Service Ombudsman if he remains dissatisfied….”

A Healthcare Commission. A Health Service Ombudsman. A Patient Advice and Liaison Service. An Independent Complaints Advocacy Service. Four ways to make a complaint but not one way for my constituent’s wife to die with dignity. We need to change all that.

Quite right – we can’t go on like this. Labour have failed on the NHS and we Conservatives are now the Party of the NHS.

Bureaucracy is holding back first-class professionals. Buckinghamshire NHS is underfunded and people feel they have lost control over their services. Thousands of people in Wycombe are rightly up in arms about the loss of services at Wycombe Hospital.

This is why I’m backing David Cameron and Andrew Lansley on the NHS. Only the Conservatives are taking seriously the huge challenges facing the NHS.  We recognise that, with an increasing and aging population, rising patient expectations and advances in treatments, the NHS must be protected with real terms increases in spending.

But this protection must be supported with real reform. Our draft manifesto for health includes key pledges which go in entirely the right direction to deliver:

• A patient-centred NHS
• A more accessible and accountable NHS
• Improvements to the Nation’s public health

David Cameron and Andrew Lansley have made the Conservatives the Party of the NHS and I am backing them for the change Wycombe needs.

The problems caused by the withdrawal of services from Wycombe Hospital are becoming very real:

TWO women gave birth in the back of an ambulance because of changes at Wycombe Hospital – leading them to warn that lives are at risk.

via Hospital cuts: babies born in back of ambulances (From Bucks Free Press).

Today, I attended the NHS Buckinghamshire overview and scrutiny meeting and I now look forward to a number of follow-up discussions.

The Church of England sustains its stand for morality:

They were joined by the bishops of Winchester and Carlisle, who claimed ministers had squandered their opportunity to transform society and run out of steam, sacrificing principled politics and long-term solutions for policies designed to win votes.

Right now, I am part way through James Bartholomew’s “The Welfare State We’re In”. It is a devastating critique of the state’s failure to centrally-plan cradle to grave education and care: for example, the author claims that the avoidable deaths in the NHS amount to a daily train wreck. We can do better but we must be bold if we are to restore humanity to social provision.

See also: http://www.stevebaker.info/2008/12/recommended-reading-freedom-for-public-services/

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