‘We didn’t tell staff centre was closing.... but they might have thought so’

Fears for the urgent care centre at Kent and Canterbury Hospital emerged last week after staff were told it was set to close. met health trust boss this week in an attempt to finally get a straight answer about its future

The office of the man overseeing hospital services in east Kent sits somewhere inside a maze of featureless corridors in a 1930s building.

Matthew Kershaw’s task is no less complex or daunting. He is in charge of the single greatest reorganisation of hospital services since Canterbury, Ashford and Margate hospitals were merged into a single trust in the late 1990s.

The wholesale changes could leave the Kent and Canterbury downgraded to little more than a cottage hospital.

Mr Kershaw is carrying out his work in the face of extraordinary pressures on resources and money.

We had specifically asked to speak to him directly because of the relentless speculation from staff inside the trust that before long it will close the urgent care centre at the K&C, forcing patients suffering strokes or heart attacks to go to the QEQM Hospital in Margate or the William Harvey.

Is this true? Has the trust told its staff the centre is closing?

“No, we haven’t,” says Mr Kershaw flatly.

He follows up with some NHS management speak about “maintaining the safety of services” but admits that “we are looking at the safety and sustainability of these services and speaking to staff about the pressures on these services and looking at what we can do to address these pressures”.

Conspicuously absent from our conversation was any mention of last week’s Gazette front page headline: “Hospital ‘to close’ urgent care unit.”

If that was so wide of the mark, wouldn’t the hospitals’ chief exec be putting the paper straight on the centre’s future? Apparently not.

This begs another question: Why do so many staff think the unit is closing if they have not been told it is?

Mr Kershaw has the answer: “People obviously take a view from the conversations that we’ve had. Part of our style here at the hospital is to talk with our staff, to engage with our staff and to be open with our staff.

“We have talked to them about some of the pressures that we face. Those pressures are real and we are dealing with those pressures. Clearly, if there are further difficulties, we would have to look at what options we’ve got.

“But we do not have a final plan at this point. We don’t have a timetable that we are absolutely working to. That’s work we need to do and will do with our staff. Obviously some staff will form opinions based upon conversations that we’ve had and that’s quite right that they do that.”

So, the trust denies categorically that it has told staff the