‘We need more assurances over hospital’s future’
THIS is a letter I have sent to our MP and the leader of Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, with regard to the meeting they recently held with senior health and care officials from the CCG, STP, MPFT, NHS and Staffordshire County Council (SCC) about Leek Moorlands Hospital.
The statement read: “It was a positive and constructive meeting and we were reassured that we all share the same aim: to deliver the “right health and social care services for the people of Leek and the Moorlands.”
Whilst you have had these reassurances, can we the people of Leek and Moorlands, in turn, also receive reassurance from you, that we are all “singing from the same hymn sheet” when referring to the “right health and social care services for the people of Leek and the Moorlands.” This is fundamental for the agendas of all meetings concerning our Leek and Moorlands Hospital.
“Save our Hospital” and other supporters have constantly campaigned for, as a minimum, the 37 beds and all other services to be restored and maintained, in order that the hospital can continue to provide the excellence it has continually been praised for, by the people of the Leek and Moorlands, and many others too. You yourselves will know the enormously high reputation the hospital has earned and upheld in living memory. The term “Second to None” springs to mind.
To the people of Leek and the Moorlands, the phrase you use the “right health and social care services for the people of Leek and the Moorlands” means restoring the equilibrium to what it was before the CCG’S removal of the beds, and restoring the status it had for the people of being a “Pinnacle of Perfection” so to speak. We need to know whether that is also what you are concerned to bring back for the electorate, or not.
I hope you will understand that the continued actions of the CCG do nothing to instill confidence. People are not likely to forget that the CCG ordered the “temporary” removal of the 37 beds at the hospital without any consultation whatsoever. How long is “temporary”?
Shortly after the CCG received the vote of no confidence, it went ahead and removed two more services, again without public consultation, despite their promise to do better.
Regarding the letter from the accountable officer for the CCG in the Post and Times, elements are at odds with the actions they’ve taken.
He says plans will “not be to the detriment of meeting the health and care needs of local people.” Does he not recognise or care that the health and support needs of local people have already been, and continue to be, detrimentally affected by the actions of the CCG?
Patients and their carers and visitors travel miles to the already overwhelmed Royal Stoke University Hospital for treatment.
Also, patients have been sent into care homes which have been condemned by the Care Quality Commission. All this instead of being properly and caringly accommodated in Leek.
Shouldn’t those in authority credit us, the people of Leek and Moorlands, the electorate, with the intelligence to see the need to question words, when those words don’t fit the actions?
I hope to receive your reassurance that the agenda item about “health and care”, as far as you are concerned, is in real terms exactly what “Save our Hospital” and others have been campaigning for.
If, however, this is not the case, would you please explain your wishes as far as they differ from ours?
The consultation has been delayed and delayed for an inordinate amount of time already and hopefully this won’t continue.
However, that is why we need your assurance, and because the beds and services are urgently needed here to restore the “right health and social care services for the people of Leek and the Moorlands.” which continues to go unfulfilled through the actions of the CCG.
Elizabeth Ann Sharratt Leek