A&E downgraded as pressure grows on NHS
AN ACCIDENT and emergency unit in Yorkshire is the latest service to be downgraded amid growing financial and staffing pressures on NHS services.
Health chiefs have confirmed the casualty unit at Pontefract Hospital will become an urgent treatment centre by April following warnings existing services are neither “clinically or financially sustainable”.
The centre will remain open around the clock, seven days a week, but it will no longer be staffed during the day by specialist A&E doctors. Instead, expert GPs and specialist nurses will treat patients for urgent but non-life-threatening injuries or illnesses, as well as minor complaints.
The changes come ahead of others affecting A&E care in the region, with reviews of services across South Yorkshire and at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton under way.
NHS bosses have already announced controversial plans to axe the A&E unit at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.
The changes in Pontefract will bolster A&E services at the neighbouring Pinderfields Hospital in the wake of a shake-up in September that saw it become the main centre for emergency care for more than half a million people in the Wakefield district and Dewsbury.
Officials say the majority of patients currently using Pontefract will not notice any difference to care.
Councillors have decided the downgrade does not amount to a significant change in provision and are allowing it to go ahead without a public consultation, although they want assurances the
new service will be sustainable. In 2016-17, 44,000 people attended A&E at Pontefract, which costs £6.4m a year to operate. About one in 11 needed inpatient care and were transferred to Wakefield.
The unit ceased dealing with life-threatening cases six years ago when 999 ambulances were diverted to Pinderfields and no specialist hospital doctors have been based there overnight since 2012 due to staff shortages. Latest figures show on average 14 patients seek treatment each night between 10pm and 8am.
Sarah Robertshaw, a consultant in emergency medicine at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “Keeping Pontefract as a 24/7 service for people with urgent health needs means we can make the best use of the facilities and workforce we have in the district.”
She said the new centre would offer fast access to the same tests and treatment currently available but in a life-threatening emergencies, she urged people to call an ambulance.
Adam Sheppard, urgent care lead for NHS Wakefield Clinical Commissioning Group, said senior clinicians had advised that continuing to describe the service at Pontefract as an A&E department was “confusing” , adding: “We believe that making the service an urgent treatment centre will help people get the care they need in an emergency.”
Surveys in the summer suggested as many as nine in ten local people did not know it does not treat life-threatening cases.
Under separate plans, new evening and weekend GP appointments are due to be provided from the Pontefract site. The hospital will continue to provide short-stay surgery, diagnostic tests, outpatient appointments and rehabilitation services.
The changes will come two decades after local people fought off the first plans to centre A&E care 11 miles away at Pinderfields.
The shake-up is the latest to A&E services in the area. Since September, “blue-light” ambulances no longer take patients to Dewsbury’s emergency department, with casualties instead transferred for treatment at Pinderfields, Bradford or Huddersfield.