Dozens of A&E units, GP surgeries and walk-in centres have been earmarked for closure because of the NHS’s financial woes, understaffing and modernisation plan, a new report has revealed.
NHS bodies have decided in the last four months alone to shut or downgrade at least 70 services across England, the campaign group 38 Degrees has discovered. They include maternity units and a raft of community hospitals. The latter are meant to take the pressure off acute hospitals, which often struggle under the weight of patient demand.
The urgent care centre in the centre of Walsall is likely to close, even though it opened only last year at a cost of £1m. The town’s NHS clinical commissioning group (CCG) wants to shut the centre to save £951,000 in annual running costs because, it has decided that not enough patients go there to justify it staying open.
The decision has yet to be confirmed after a public consultation found that 88% of respondents opposed closure and just 8% backed it. The potential loss of a facility treating 120 people a day has sparked local protests. Critics warn that it will leave Walsall’s other urgent care centre, at Manor hospital, unable to cope with the extra demand. The CCG says that too few patients use it and that many who do could go elsewhere for help, including to a local pharmacy, or could call NHS 111.
“Cuts and closures are being made and threatened to frontline NHS services across the country,” said Holly Maltby, a campaigner with 38 Degrees. “It is clear from these findings that the impact of NHS under-funding is being felt across England and access to services is under threat of being compromised.”
Closures All Around
Six walk-in centres, two sexual health clinics and one children’s service are also on the endangered list compiled by 38 Degrees. The walk-in centres to be closed include the facility in Lincoln (left), which is the only service of its type in Lincolnshire.
Lincoln Labour MP Karen Lee (left), a former NHS nurse, has voiced “serious disquiet about the plan”, as have local council leaders. Patients can end up having to travel further to see a GP or other doctor, and maternity units are sometimes closed to new arrivals at short notice while people with mental illness get less support at home, she said.
Seven mental health services or teams are at risk of closure, despite mental illness supposedly being a top government priority. They include Newholme hospital in Bakewell, Derbyshire, which will go as part of the local NHS’s plans to provide more care closer to patients’ homes, which will also see a total of 104 beds at five community hospitals disappear.
Threats to Care
The six A&Es that are under threat as a result of plans to reorganise urgent and emergency care include those at Grantham hospital (left) in Lincolnshire, Poole hospital in Dorset and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Dewsbury and District Hospital, both in Yorkshire.
The A&E at Weston hospital, in Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, ceased functioning between 10pm and 8am from July because it could not find enough staff to provide care that was safe for patients. And the emergency department at King George hospital in Ilford, Essex, is due to be downgraded to an urgent care centre in 2019, although council leaders and local MPs are campaigning against it.
The impending closure of nine different GP practices will force the 45,000 patients affected to find new family doctors, 38 Degrees says. The closures are happening across England including in Stockton in the north-east and in Folkestone on the south coast.
“We know that the NHS is facing extreme pressure at the moment,” said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of council at the British Medical Association. “Service closures, driven by budgetary cuts, are adding considerable pressure to parts of the system. This could leave some patients waiting longer for services or being unable to receive the care they need, which in turn affects their outcomes.”
by Bob Graham
The post NHS: More A&E and GP Surgeries To Close appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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