Health watchdogs from councils in Cumbria will meet next week (Tuesday 29 July) to satisfy themselves that changes to services at the Westmorland General Hospital are ready to go ahead.
The changes, which were agreed last year by a joint scrutiny committee of councillors from Cumbria and Lancashire, will mean that most medical patients can continue to be treated in Kendal.
Patients with the most serious medical conditions will be treated in hospitals in Lancaster or Barrow, where a full range of hospital services to deal with their conditions is available.
Members of the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee have been tracking the reshaping of services at the hospital and agreed in January 2008 that criteria had been met to enable the first two stages to proceed.
At a meeting in Kendal’s Quaker Tapestry Building next Tuesday, councillors will receive information from the NHS on whether the remaining two stages are now ready to go ahead.
These include the closure of the Westmorland General Hospital’s last acute medical ward and its Coronary Care Unit.
Councillors will want to be satisfied that the changes will be made without any undue risk to patients' safety. In particular, they will want to be sure:
- that the hospitals in Lancaster and Barrow now have the capacity to treat more patients with the most serious medical conditions, on top of their existing workload
- that the ambulance service has sufficient vehicles, properly staffed and equipped and
- that patients who have had a heart attack can get sufficiently speedy access to the treatment they require.
Scrutiny members will also be seeking assurances that a new, round-the-clock Primary Care Assessment Service and GP-run medical ward will be in place at the hospital by the time the changes happen.
As well as receiving updates from NHS representatives, Scrutiny will also be hearing from the local SOS group for Westmorland General Hospital.
Many members of the public have also sent letters to councillors, and what their letters say will be discussed at Scrutiny, which will also receive a report on the written responses received by the committee up to 20 July 2008.
County Councillor Bert Richardson is chairman of Cumbria Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee. He said:
"Last year, when we agreed the overall package of changes planned at the Westmorland General Hospital, we also received undertakings from the NHS that we would be notified at each key stage so we could check that essential criteria had been met.
"We look forward to hearing what the NHS has now done in preparation for the remaining changes at Westmorland General Hospital to take place.
"Because the whole purpose of these changes is to provide better health care for patients, we will want to be assured that the changes can take place safely and have the support of leading clinicians - both hospital doctors and GPs."
ENDS
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