Town is likely to have full A&E unit in future

HEALTH CHIEFS have indicated that Huddersfield Royal Infirmary will have a full accident and emergency department in the future.

They were responding to calls for clarity from campaigners who have queried the suitability of the proposed facility at the infirmary and whether it will have the necessary clinical co-dependencies to make it a full A&E, formerly known as a “Type 1”.

Calderdale and Huddersfeld NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT) was awarded £196m in April 2019 to alter the HRI and Calderdale Royal Hospital. However, the vast amount of money is set to be spent in Halifax with about £30m allocated to the combined new plans and revamp in Huddersfield.

Pressed by campaigners and councillors for more detail on their plans for the HRI site, A&E consultant Mark Davies, the hospitals’ clinical lead for emergency medicine, said the future category of A&E at Huddersfield had not yet been formally defined.

He said: “In terms of the categories that are used, Level 1 is described as a consultant-led emergency department, which will cater for patients with all presentations. I’d imagine it would be that one (at HRI), but that would be for NHS England to define rather than us.”

He said plans for HRI included “the emergency management of all patients who arrive” and emergency physicians there 24 hours a day as well as senior anaesthetics.

He added: “What we will not have is the ability to deal with every patient who arrives all of the time. We don’t have that ability at Huddersfield or at Halifax now, which is why we have specialist services at Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield that we and the rest of West Yorkshire use on a regular basis.”