Sir Ron issues a ‘storm’ warning
FORMER Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust chairman Sir Ron Watson said he recognised the “powerful” arguments for concentrating vital services on one hospital site - but believed the proposals would raise “a storm of protest”.
He said: “The suggestion put forward by the new chief executive of the trust where he indicates that there should be a new hospital built to serve the area which would involve the closing of the two existing hospitals is – as he admits – very unlikely to happen because of the significant capital cost involved and the difficulty in knowing what to do with the existing sites.
“The proposal for there to be a ‘hot site’ and a ‘cold site’ are not new by any means and were first proposed about 15 years ago by the then Sefton Health Authority on which I was the vice chairman.
“The arguments with this degree of clinical rationalisation are very powerful and if anything have been strengthened over the years as the dif- ferent demands for health care in both Southport and Ormskirk become apparent.
“The argument then and the argument now will remain the same which briefly stated are that whichever hospital is designed to be the ‘cold site’ will raise a storm of political and public protest whichever hospital is thought to be the most appropriate for this level of care.
“Certainly the Labour MP for Ormskirk will be in the forefront to have the hospital in her area designed as the ‘hot site’ and the MP for Southport is bound to take the oppo- site view. At the end of the day as more people begin to realise that a rationalisation of services dependent on local demand must play its part in doing something to address some of the real critical issues facing the NHS and whilst the significant £20bn funding increase announced by the Government is going to be very helpful it will not, in itself, resolve the issues.
“The decision, therefore, will need to be made on clinical grounds with due regard paid to access as any other solution will not address the problems.”