My doubts over ‘Fit for the Future’

FIT for the Future, developing specialist hospital services in Gloucestershire, makes interesting, if sometimes, confusing reading.

NHS England, the Royal College of Surgeons and Getting it Right First Time are amongst the national bodies that have recommended the separation of emergency and elective surgical services preferably, as would be the case locally, on different hospital sites.

Gloucestershire appears to be following this advice, but only partially.

It proposes elective and cancer surgery being undertaken at Cheltenham.

All emergency orthopaedics and emergency medicine patients will be treated in Gloucester, with all the pressure on intensive care and hospital beds that this will entail.

It also proposes to retain elective upper gastrointestinal surgery and 40 per cent of elective orthopaedic surgery in Gloucester.

In addition, vascular surgery has already been moved to Gloucester from Cheltenham, despite £2m being spent on a specialist vascular operating theatre five years ago.

This despite the overwhelming amount of vascular surgery being elective or urgent in type, with very few patients being emergencies.

In 2020, the world, this country and the county of Gloucestershire, have been very seriously and adversely affected by the horrors of the Covid pandemic.

Many lives have been lost, and our hospitals have been under enormous pressure.

We have been warned of the distinct possibility of other pandemics in the future.

However, despite perusal of 30 pages or so of sometime muddled thinking in Fit for the Future, there does not appear to be a word about planning for any future pandemic.

Gloucestershire appears not to have been aware of Covid and the devastation it has caused.

Taking these various points into consideration, the question has to be asked, is Fit for the Future fit for the future?

Geoffrey Fox FRCS