Report to the People
14th July 2003
Taking the Road to Centralisation is a
Wrong Turning
Five
minutes in the General Register Office with a calculator confirms two things
about the Steering Group’s recommendation that all inpatient
consultant-led maternity services be centralised at Paisley’s
Royal Alexandria Hospital.
One,
it could concentrate maternity services for up to quarter of the Scottish
female population in two hospitals which are seven miles apart.
And two, it will
force over 200,000 women over a 2,880 square mile area to
travel to a single hospital for inpatient consultant-led services.
You
don’t have to be a brain surgeon to work out that this is another attempt to
centralise services in the NHS.
Taking
the road to centralisation is a wrong turning.
It restricts access and limits choice.
In this case, it will mean that throughout
Argyll and Clyde – from Tiree
to Largs, Campbelltown to Greenock and everywhere else in between – expectant
mothers who require consultant-led inpatient care will have to go to the RAH.
Nothing
could change my view that this decision is wrong. But it might be easier to accept if we were confident that
all the arguments were given due consideration.
However,
when we see how the consultation process was, despite representations, cut
short, I’m not sure we can
be. The promised Citizens’
Juries, which would have allowed us to call and quiz witnesses over their plans,
were scrapped. The consultation
period was interrupted by the festive season and an election campaign. And, sadly, consultants did not even attend the public
meetings and information events to argue their case for centralisation.
If
consultation guidelines and frameworks cannot guarantee that decisions are taken
correctly, it looks like it might be time to bring in legislative safeguards.
I am therefore backing two Private
Member’s Bills which aim
to make the system more accountable.
That,
though, is for the longer term. My
immediate priority from now until they make their final decision on the 29th
of this month is to try and convince the Health Board to reject this
recommendation. At the same time, I
will be discussing the impact of this move on other health services, such as
paediatrics, and will be seeking assurances that the continuity of care for
women already in the system will not be affected.
If health authorities want to review how and where they deliver services, the appropriate weight must be given to the competing arguments. The voices, not just of clinicians who, for whatever reason, seem determined to create a network of regional “super-hospitals”, but also those of the communities who rely on and who pay for those services, must be heard.
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