New A&E ‘may solve hospital staffing problems’
YORKSHIRE POST
AN NHS boss has said creating a new accident and emergency department to serve North Yorkshire’s coastal and remote rural areas could help solve long-standing recruitment issues at a general hospital.
Simon Cox, of the North Yorkshire clinical commissioning group, told a meeting of North Yorkshire County Council’s scrutiny of health committee that plans to move combined emergency, assessment and critical care services into purpose-built facilities at Scarborough Hospital were now at an advanced stage and very likely to go ahead.
The meeting heard that the new combined department would enable “workforce efficiencies and delivery of a service model that is both responsive to need and resilient to increasing levels of activity” at the hospital, which has previously been forced to declare major incidents owing to spikes in demand.
Mr Cox was speaking just over a year after the Care Quality Commission rated the hospital as needing improvement, raising concerns over York Teaching Hospitals’ NHS Trust’s plans to ensure it had “sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, skilled, competent and experienced clinical staff to meet the needs of patients”.
Over the past decade North Yorkshire has seen numerous NHS services downgraded or closed altogether, such as Thirsk’s Lambert Memorial Hospital and Northallerton’s 24-hour maternity unit, on patient safety grounds owing to an inability to attract sufficient numbers of qualified health staff.
Councillor Caroline Goodrick said she would welcome the development of the new A&E department.
She said it was very impor
tant for rural areas, but added that she was concerned over its staffing, given the difficulties the NHS has previously faced in attracting people who wanted to work in the health service in Scarborough.
Mr Cox said maintaining a workforce was the biggest challenge at the hospital, probably owing to its coastal location, adding: “I would have a nervousness about the ability to recruit all of the staff.”
However, he said there were various factors in the hospital’s favour, including September seeing the first cohort of 30 nurses to complete training in Scarborough in two decades and the recent recruitment of medics.
In 2018 public meetings were held in Scarborough when people who attended spoke in support of retaining a good accident and emergency service in the town to support people in coastal communities.