Convalescent homes will stop bed-blockers

IT is heartening to read our MPs are plugging a case for another hospital in mid to north Cornwall and I hope it comes to fruition.

The disheartening part is that several of us wrote about this more than 40 years ago, with nothing happening to resolve matters.

It might reasonably be argued that hospital and convalescent services have worsened since the closure of several smaller outlying units, leaving many of us at a loss to understand why successive governments deemed it a good idea to close these units, when post-surgical bed-blocking at our main hospital would be the obvious result?

No one needed a crystal ball in order to spot future problems in the county’s NHS with annual residential population growth increasing among the over-50s, decreasing in those aged under 40, yet expanding overall year-on-year; currently 570,000 residents including the Scillies.

NHS hospitals such as West Cornwall and Hayle are proving themselves to be increasingly important in taking the load from over-pressed staff at Treliske and even hospitals the size of Falmouth’s and Redruth’s have important roles to play in helping people to recover from surgery. It is encouraging to read of proposal for West Cornwall’s hospital expansion.

Given the millions of pounds invested decades ago in upgrading both City hospital, Truro and Tehidy hospital prior to their closures and sale to housing developers, it makes you wonder why that level of financial mismanagement and short-sightedness was allowed to go ahead when it did.

Further investment in hospital buildings we have right now and a greater staff recruitment drive with improved pay and conditions might be the sensible option in easing the current problem we hear of on a regular basis at Treliske. It remains unfair on current staff with their workload ripe for early burn-out, which will only make matters much worse.

£100 billion-plus spent on HS2, or greater financial support for the NHS? I know governments of the day might say funding for both comes from different quarters, but one should be scrapped and the other continually improved upon, surely?

Paul Wakeling West Cornwall